Tell HN: YC rejection emails have started going out

[nicholasreed]

Via email:

We're sorry to say we couldn't accept your proposal for funding. Please don't take it personally. The applications we receive get better every funding cycle, and since there's a limit on the number of startups we can interview in person, we had to turn away a lot of genuinely promising groups.

Unfortunately we can't give you individual feedback about your application. This page explains why:

http://ycombinator.com/whynot.html

Another reason you shouldn't take this personally is that we know we make lots of mistakes. It's alarming how often the last group to make it over the threshold for interviews ends up being one that we fund. That means there are surely other good groups that fall just below the threshold and that we miss even interviewing.

We're trying to get better at this, but the hard limit on the number of interviews means it's practically certain that groups we rejected will go on to create successful startups. If you do, we'd appreciate it if you'd send us an email telling us about it; we want to learn from our mistakes.

Y Combinator Team

[DanielRibeiro]

I'm just hoping to give a few people some perpective on such rejections:

- Damien Katz (creator of CouchDB) was also rejected[1]. He went on and got $2 million from Redpoint Ventures [2]

- On this video[3], Jessica Livingston interviews Drew. It shows that he was also rejected the first time he tried out YC.

- The oscar of rejected but finally accepted: I got into YC after applying six times [4]

- Peteris Krumins also got rejected with his browserling idea, got rejected[5], and went on to raise his own seed funding[6].

[1] http://damienkatz.net/2006/11/how_not_to_pitc.html

[2] http://damienkatz.net/2009/12/relaxed_inc.html

[3] http://blog.ycombinator.com/dropbox-interview-now-online

[4] http://iamwil.posterous.com/i-got-into-yc-after-applying-six...

[5] http://www.catonmat.net/blog/launching-browserling/

[6] http://www.catonmat.net/blog/how-i-raised-money-for-browserl...

[SeoxyS]

Chartboost got rejected from YC in S11. These days we're at $21M in funding led by Sequoia for Series B and ~55 employees. :)

It's not the end of the world.

[iamwil]

Oscar of Rejected wasn't exactly on my list of life goals. But I'll take it.

[andyjsong]

Interviewstreet was rejected twice before applying the third time to get an email asking them to come in for a 10 min interview.

[kamaal]

This reminds me of days around 11 years back, when I was studying for engineering college entrance exams.

We would have entrance exams for coaching classes which prepared students for main entrance exams, basically the elite coaching institutes would ask candidates undergo a entrance test and pick up only the best.

Many of my friends were rejected, including me. Some were selected. In the end in the main exams we did better than the guys who were selected for the coaching class. It just turns out after we were rejected we were motivated to push ourselves further more than others.

Rejection can do wonders if taken in the right spirit. You basically go into the phase to 'prove something' to not just yourself but every one around.

This is a very well drafted email.

>>Another reason you shouldn't take this personally is that we know we make lots of mistakes.

Says it all. YC companies fail too.

And there are a lot of non-YC companies that win. At the end YC is like the coaching class entrance exam, not the main engineering entrance exam.

Your main test is how and what you do on the ground.

[PAULHANNA84]

Very well put! Nice! :)

[clicks]

I just want to say that e-mail looks very well-written and comforting for a rejection e-mail. I wish companies sent similar rejection e-mails to job applicants.

Keep your spirits up, rejectees, this is not the end of the world. Continue doing your thing. :)

[zalzane]

I wish girls would do the same thing. Imagine how nice the world would be if everyone wrote their rejections this way!

[ciupicri]

I for one wish companies would give more details to job applicants. I've heard that some companies don't give you any details for fear of (discrimination?!) lawsuits or, as a recruiter once told me, simply paranoia. If someone knows other reasons for this besides not keeping records of the interviews, I'd like to know more.

What's even stranger/funnier is that some companies reject you without giving any specific reasons, yet they invite you to reapply for another position or the same later.

[bitlather1]

Nicest rejection I've had to date

[strukturedkaos]

We, Body Boss (http://bodybossfitness.com) didn't even have a product last time year, and we thought just having a good idea was enough for acceptance. In the past year, we've boostrapped like crazy, built a product, launched and acquired plenty of customers to validate our idea.

YC rejection for the 2nd year in a row has done little to dampen our spirits and ambition. Here's to another rejection that motivates us to succeed!

- Proud Rejectee

[danenania]

Congrats on your success--the site looks great! It loads pretty slowly for me though even with a decent connection. I'm in Australia, so that could be a factor, but I see a few quick optimizations you could do.

1 - Some of your images are huge. The ipad workouts image alone is 300kb, which is way too big. Of course you want them to be good quality, but you should be able to cut a lot of weight without any noticeable effect. The Fireworks Export Wizard is a good tool for this.

2 - Some of your images are unnecessarily broken up into lots of separate img tags. The main landing page image with the helmets and devices has over 6 tags. You should combine images in order to have as few img tags as possible. It will reduce http requests and also give the browser less layout work to do.

3 - On a similar note, you have a bunch of small images like the player portraits that you could group into a spritesheet to further reduce requests.

4 - It doesn't seem like you're using a CDN? Something like Cloudfront or Cloudflare is quick to setup and will improve download time for your images drastically, especially for people who are far away from your server like me.

5 - You should put your javascript at the bottom of the body instead of in the head. You're not executing anything until the dom is loaded anyway, and putting at the bottom will allow the page to render before the js is downloaded and parsed, improving perceived load time. Use 'display: none' to initially hide anything that depends on the js to look right.

[jmduke]

Just wanted to say that I'm nowhere near your target market but the landing page looks excellent, incredibly polished for less than a year's work. Best of luck to you!

[D-Train]

Yeah, even bootstrapping, we're still getting great recognition. We even just signed the NFL's Carolina Panthers up for Body Boss!

[michaelkscott]

Wow. Very impressive site.

[dpott197]

+1

[bradleybuda]

I'll throw my "rejected from YC" story into the ring: my co-founders and I applied to the S12 batch. We were fortunate to get as far as the interview phase, only to receive a very kind rejecting email from Garry Tan that evening. His basic criticism was: "you guys aren't serious about this idea" (we hadn't yet quit our day jobs).

So we quit. We spent the summer building Meldium, reapplied for W13, and were accepted - and it was an amazing boost to our company. As a founder, you're going to get rejected a lot - use it as an opportunity to learn and grow.

[boringkyle]

Context: We sent an application in for S12 and S13.

Interesting that you mentioned "serious." Looking back I don't think I was a whole lot "serious" the last time I applied, but I think my application might have been better (see my comment below - got more video views last year, but that could have been an anomaly).

In any case, I wonder if being in school this time hurts our chances. Most of our founders are graduating, and the rest have signed on to jobs. But we are more serious about it this time around - hacking away on public transit, on campus and pulling all-nighters to get features out.

[borski]

We've offered this before, and are doing so again, because startups are hard and a YC rejection is but one roadblock you will face (among many).

So, Tinfoil Security is offering our $59 Basic plan free for life, and 50% off all other plans. Happy to keep startups secure :) Email your YC rejection letter to [email protected] and we'll hook you up.

[suhail]

Stay hungry, stay alive, and be relentlessly resourceful (as PG says). You'll figure it out.

A long standing tradition: If you got rejected, please forward your rejection email to [email protected] and we'll hook you up with a free Mixpanel plan to help out while you're figuring it out.

- Suhail

[jeffreyshaw]

I love this tradition; and for the first time would like to make a similar offer:

Anyone who got rejected from YC S13 forward your rejection email to [email protected] and I'll send you a $25 gift card for free wine from http://UndergroundCellar.com

I'm not suggesting you drink your problems away, but a relaxing glass of wine can be a nice way to wind down before you get back to those 14 hour hack days.

[bobsil1]

Thanks! Got a link, says "promotion ended." Much appreciate it though.

[shrig94]

FlightCar was rejected on first pass--don't feel bad guys! The reason most startups fail is because the founders give up. So don't give up and keep hustling!

--Shri (Founder, FlightCar)

[saravk]

Kettik, http://www.kettik.com/ (not mobile friendly), was rejected as well. Not very surprised or dejected by it as I was pretty much in the exact opposite founder demographic they were looking for. Single founder, close to 35, middle of the road play by the rules kind of guy loved by all (2) the big corporations that hired me over a span of 11years.

Oh well.. targeting for the YC application gave me the required focus in the last 5 months to turn my hobby/personal-use site into a full fledged travel blogging & recommendations platform ready to launch in a couple of months.

I don't think i will re-apply any time soon. My goal, starting Kettik, was to achieve creative, financial and geographic freedom. To create something of my own, travel, live and work from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. Not sure how free i would've been if i had funding, a team to manage and investors to give returns to. So i guess the best thing to do is to continue on my own and focus on making Kettik profitable enough to sustain itself, me and my co-founders (if i manage to find any).

And maybe one day if it grows too big for me to manage, i'll go knocking on YC's doors again.

[maximgsaini]

You know what guys, I feel honored to have been given the opportunity to apply, be reviewed and then rejected. Today is one of the best days I have had in weeks. I just realized where we were and how far we have come in the month we were 'associated' with YC. YC really got us to speed things up, change our user interface, create a prototype (although YC never saw it, cause we were late), change our entire strategy.

I think YC has done more than enough for me. Anything more and this would become a fairy tale :). To be honest, I never wanted this to be an easy fairy tale. I want this to be a story worth telling to my children. I like battles where the victor emerges half-alive.

Now its time for me to captain this ship to the shore. And damnit I will :) This is my ship, my baby, and I will never let it sink alone.

Im so thankful for the people in my life. They stick with me and believe in me regardless of my lunacy, willing to take the bullets for me.

Keep working hard people. We'll meet each other at the finish line. :)

[tomasien]

It's going to get harder and harder to get into YC (as has been the trend) which means getting rejected is going to mean less and less. It used to be an "oh we make mistakes, but mostly we find the right founders" and now it's "we find a lot of great founders, but we miss several successful ones each batch."

Don't think it means nothing, it means something about where you are in your life as a founder and how well you can communicate that (and that matters), but not anything more than that.

- 5x rejectee and pretty successful dude

[sfrechtling]

Just curiously - how many video views did everybody get? We had 5 views for a total of ~4 minutes.

[boringkyle]

We had 4 views from the west coast the day after we applied. Another 4 this week. Last time we applied, we got over 20. PG says they only look at the videos if the application seems promising. So I guess my application got worse?

[CaveTech]

Don't put too much thought into this. We had ~1 view when I applied a year back and we got called in for interviews.

[basch]

1 view, 30 seconds. They didn't even get to the actual proposal.

[kogir]

Links to one public, embeddable youtube video (like the directions asked) were presented inline during review and were much easier to watch.

If your video wasn't on youtube, or it wasn't embeddable, or you used a third party link shortener (not youtu.be) - reviewers had to do extra work to view your video.

[hiddenstage]

0 views. Which is weird because last batch we got 4 views and we feel this was a much better application.

[clittle]

8 views total here. No idea how many minutes. 2 pr 3 might have been ourselves by accident.

[patforna]

2 views in total. One view 20 secs, the other the whole duration (1:29)

[victormier]

1 view 16 seconds 2 days after application was sent. :(

[frankdenbow]

4 views, average of ~ 55 seconds

[Y_Not]

we had 15 views, and 5 demo views. rejected.

[garydarna]

We had 10.

[Hitchhiker]

Well what is really weird is that yC's top hits as per an annotation on Harj's recent mock letter on Rapgenius got looked over:

" We missed Dropbox, Heroku and Airbnb. " [1]

If the 3 supposed hits that presently created most of yC's entire known value got passed over by the VCs at first go.. one has to be a bit skeptical about the whole idol contest.

[1] - http://rapgenius.com/Harj-taggar-well-be-circling-back-lyric...

[rdl]

That was a joke; he was writing as if he were an outside VC who wanted to get in on YC's next Dropbox, having missed the first one. (Coincidentally PG has said he didn't "get" AirBnB initially, but I don't think they got rejected; I'm not sure if the first Drew application which was rejected was for Dropbox or something else. I've never seen anything public about Heroku's application to YC)

[nicrogo]

I've had my rejection letter as well and I was actually surprised how human and respectful was this letter. They're very good at marketing, it's like breaking up: it's not you, it's us! ;)

I think it's obvious that this rejection letter should not put a stop to your projects but rather keep improving them, that's what I'm gonna do.

I already applied to techstars and I will apply again at Y combinator. Next time I'll be ready!

I'm looking for a co-founder in order to launch a new mobile advertising platform for hyperlocalized marketing.

You can support my application at TechStars at the following url: http://www.f6s.com/geome#main/ajax-summary

I'm still at an early stage but if you're interested, PM me and I'll explain you what this is about.

You can also follow me on twitter: @Nicrogo

Many thx!!

[liddybird]

www.getjuniper.com just got rejected! We definitely have better luck with getting ladies to like us than getting PG to like us. ;)

[boringkyle]

Love that you have a functional page and not another one of the launchrock sites I had to click through.

One alumni told me that YC was all about picking billion dollar, not million dollar businesses. In that case, could you say juniper would scale to the billion dollar market? Could your users track their usage with a recurring Google calendar entry? (I know women that do). Why not scale to include other high usage products - toothpaste, toilet paper, etc? (I know of one startup in stealth mode doing this, so it's probably a feasible plan). Sorry for playing devil's advocate - really like what you got so far though.

[ad93611]

I've been rejected before. However it is worded, I know it is hard to take. Here is my sincere offer to help.

http://gaglers.com will be happy to help with our live chat or community chat product. We have unlimited agents and SSL in all our plans. Send your rejection email to [email protected] and get to use our top plan(Pro) for free for 6 months.

We love to help small and agile startups. Here is why, http://gaglers.com/blog/2013/03/29/live-chat-software-unlimi...

[makeshifthoop]

If your App or mobile startup got rejected by YC, don't worry, keep going at it. Get a free account at https://AppStoreRankings.net where we can help you get more users for your mobile (ios+android) apps. Just forward your YC rejection email to [email protected] and we'll give you a free lifetime membership of our site.

[sscgod]

First time and Declined! Would love to see what you've done. Come check out our application at http://parlayz.com. A social network for sports fans where you can make sports prediction models without data or programming skills. Hope to see you guys soon in the bay area.

[madradavid]

I received this exactly email last year,September 16 to be precise,it was the first day of the rest of my life. Make no mistake about it, receiving this email hurts, but then you pick yourself up ,make your product better and better and keep on going. All the best moving forward....