I never got into Y Combinator (I think I applied 4 times but I'm not sure) but I'm now the CEO of a rapidly growing, well funded startup that actually SERVES an increasing number of YC companies. The way I always thought about YC was that it is ALWAYS worth applying because the exercise is good and the upside is high (and the downside minimal) but getting into YC should never be "part of your plan" - there are too many other great applicants, plain and simple.
It's the same as how no student should ever PLAN to get into Harvard, and Harvard even has SATs and GPAs to rely on (fairly objective stats around which you can make a guess about your odds) while YC has only heuristics based on experience and founder reputation. Never judge yourself based on something that has an open application process - it doesn't define you, it defines them. No reason not to apply, but take it as a bonus if you get in, don't take it personally if you get rejected.
For those with less experience, the disappointment will pass. Take a day if you need to reflect on what you're doing, why you're doing it and how you could do it better.
Rejection is fuel for the fire, use it to burn brighter going forward.
Next time, be so good they can't ignore you, simple as that.
You'll get there, with or without them. That kind of persistence will eventually pay off because you're not letting outside factors determine your success as much as you can. Kudos!
Persistence isn't always a virtue. If you've been rejected 7 times, please stop expending your time and emotional energy on YC.
Redirect that energy to building your business. Build your product and get customers/users, which is the real endgame, not getting into YC or getting a check from a fancy Sandhill VC.
I'm reminded a bit of http://www.bvp.com/portfolio/antiportfolio, a collection of companies that applied to Bessemer Venture Partners for VC funds, were denied, and went on to make it big.
This was our first time, and we are rejected. (http://cubic.fm)
During the application process I started to realize, YC asks all the right questions. Just trying to find proper answers is a huge step forward for the first timers, like us. We learned a lot.
I think, the only thing that missing is the feedback loop. I'm aware of the fact that there are more applicants than YC could accept, or provide a feedback. But after all, we still need a feedback.
After I saw the rejection email, first I planned to share our application in HN to get feedback from the community. But now I see this is a need for all the rejected applicants. I'm not sure what could be a better way for closing the feedback loop. Maybe, there's a start-up idea in here somewhere :)
Anyone feeling down should read Ev William's story from "Founders at Work" on how he had to create, recreate, and recreate his team at Blogger. There was an year when he was the only one running Blogger when the entire team left. It is truly inspiring!
Great things can happen when you're low on budget and there are numerous entrepreneurial stories about those early days. Sometimes it is much needed to go through the early struggles to come out even stronger in the end.
There are more applicants than YCombinator could accept (or anyone could accept if you look at it in scale). Someone should create a social-media type website for YCombinator applicants (or anyone) to share their stories, meet, interact, network, learn, and collaborate on new and existing ideas. Imagine how many start-ups would be "born" like this. Think of how many great ideas don't get in or simply don't apply, think of how BIG this community could grow to be in a short time - it would grow by itself. Look at what Kickstarter is doing. Think of how many new comers this type of stepping stone would benefit and help achieve their ideas. Starting this community is possible by creating a great website that creatively engages members to collaborate. Let YCombinator (and anyone else) endorse it - first to members of the y-community then others. In fact "y-community" should be the name of it. We all know that out kind already burn with passion, desire and creativity. With minimal guidance from YCombinator it could succeed faster - passionate desires of those not-accepted will continue to burn and be fostered. Eventually, and this is speculating perhaps, if YCombinator becomes somewhat involved, with so many start-up communities popping-up in every city and country, this website, could grow to become the "Facebook" of start-ups. (only it would also be productive :) But seriously.
I'm definitely speaking at least a little bit out of bitterness (our team just got rejected), so with that caveat it feels like YC is becoming more like traditional VC (venture capital):
- extremely low probability of success just due to volume of applications
- no feedback (again, due to volume of applications, and they posted a nice blog post about this, but just stating a fact)
- it seems (I don't have any factual evidence to back this up, would love to be proven wrong through factual evidence) that you need to know someone
- tendency to fund those who need it the least (already-proven user traction or revenue)
YC is a for-profit, private enterprise that can do whatever it wants, and it is in the business of maximizing income, so it would be foolish for the organization not to act in a self-interested way, but just calling it like I see it (and again, it'd be great if there were any stats the organization could release to disprove any of the points above, but I understand that it has no obligation to do so).
We've been doing pretty much the same things since we started in 2005: we've never given specific feedback about rejections at the application stage (it wasn't going to scale even when we only got a few hundred applications). We funded 8 startups in our first batch, which was roughly 2-3% of the total applications.
We definitely fund people who have no connection to folks we already know, or Silicon Valley for that matter. And we also fund startups who are at the idea stage and have no traction (though traction does help).
I'm very sorry we rejected you, but we are honestly often wrong.
Lots of people will give you money if they think you will turn it into more money. VCs, YC, techstars, rich people, angel investors, your parents, your dentist, etc. Having dealt with many varieties of these before, they all generally share those principles:
- You get a lot more 'no's than 'yes'es
- They don't give you a lot of feedback when they pass
- Having a previous relationship with them is helpful
- The more successful you are, the more they want to give you money
Unless you are starting a non-profit, this is just how it works. These people are investing, not donating to charity or your team's self-development. Get some traction and/or revenue and the game will flip around very quickly.
Assuming this is true, this must be one of the easiest things in the world to hack. I would be very worried about any aspiring tech entrepreneur who couldn't manage to connect with a group of people who are as open and as generous with their time as many of the YC alums are.
> tendency to fund those who need it the least
First, I wonder if this is really true. It may look that way, but I imagine that many of the companies are in the product/market fit stage. Some may find themselves actually in the problem/solution fit stage. I imagine few are in the straight-up scaling stage.
Second, from YC's perspective, I think that they should definitely have some companies in each class for which they will simply act as a multiplier -- that is, get the company to where it is going, just faster and (maybe) better.
Lastly, if traction and/or revenue really are the key to acceptance, aspiring YC companies could simply use this as a parameter to consider when developing their company. IMHO, this is a case of the tail wagging the dog, but it's something to consider.
I agree, I think YCombinator is great and they need to find a way to "foster" the growing community of mini start-ups who are perhaps, not yet ready for incubation, or don't need it, but are still capable of realizing their potential. This community should be free for all, in order to meet, network, collaborate, learn and keep passions burning. Focus on investment potential could be secondary to focus on start-up community growth, involvement, and learning.
Been rejected , but been viewed by 6 people (alumni/or YC) and it is a victory for us for a first time.
In the end it is all about what resonate the most to them, YC has its agenda if you dont fit in it , doesnt mean you're bad or your idea is not smart enough. It means you don't fit . That's all. We will keep on working and apply in 6 months or just never apply again and make it work on our own. And I think the worst case would have been to be accepted by YC and fail once I got out of it ... which happens a lot !! :) Thanks for all YC
Got in this batch on our second time applying. First time we applied with an idea: now we have a product and customers. In retrospect I think the initial rejection was reasonable.
You have to optimize for what they want and considering how transparent the application process is, it's actually quite easy. PG's essays are step-by-step guides on how to "tick" all the right boxes. They even give you the list of ideas they wish to fund. How nice of them... No wonder YC has announced that quality of applications is increasing. It's not increasing because startups are getting better. It's increasing because more startups are optimizing.
Remember Nikki Durkin from 99dresses? She didn't just apply. She spent huge amount of time researching partners, their history, what they liked, what they wanted to hear... and she has delivered just that like a rockstar. How many promising founders are rejected because they just didn't bother to optimize like Durkin?
To me, if you get rejected, it just means you didn't put enough time into the application. If your goal is to get into YC, then keep trying, you will figure it out.
But in the end, if you are real entrepreneur, figure out what you are doing with your business. Don't optimize for YC, just do what you've got to do and if YC wants to join you for a ride, then fine. If not, too bad for them.
Optimizing for what you think YC partners want is a sure way to not get into YC. You're not a mind reader; what you think they want is almost certainly different from what they actually want. More importantly, they read thousands of applications, and you're only working on one. They can smell people who are trying to game them from a thousand miles away.
Just doing what you do is the only thing that matters and will get you in, assuming you're doing the right thing. (Asking alums for feedback on the application is a very good way to make sure you're doing the right thing and your presentation doesn't suck)
The start-ups that are of the most interest
are necessarily exceptional and significantly
different from start-ups in the past,
successful or not. Thus, evaluating start-ups when
looking for the ones of most interest
is challenging, and evaluations
via simple, empirical patterns from the past
promise to select a lot of straw and miss
some golden needles.
Really the challenge here is common, nearly
standard, and a very old story that goes back
to nothing less than the Mother Goose
children's story "The Little Red Hen":
What the hen was doing was unusual and, therefore,
not in the experience of others. Thus,
no one would help her. But when she had
hot, fragrant loaves of bread freshly out of
her oven and eager, hungry, paying customers
lined up to buy, lots of people were ready to
help. But in the interim she had to work alone
with just her own evaluation, creativity, and determination. No doubt that story is in
Mother Goose because the situation
was both common and ancient.
What is needed are better means of evaluating
projects. For a special, relatively small,
collection of projects, there are such means,
highly polished, e.g., for grant applications
to NSF, NIH, and DARPA, similarly for
Ph.D. dissertation proposals, and also
for a huge range of US DoD projects, e.g.,
the SR-71, the F-117, GPS. Generally
these projects and their evaluations have
much better batting average than Silicon
Valley equity funded information technology
start-up projects.
Maybe what Silicon Valley is doing is making money,
and the YC $30+ billion is astoundingly impressive, but
one major success can be worth $300 billion, 10
times as much, so that we have to suspect that
better evaluations could lead to better returns.
Last I applied as a single founder I got an interview. Now I have a cofounder and made significant progress but our application didn't earn us an interview (the second time applying with this idea.) Perhaps I took something for granted when i applied this time so the app turned out weaker or disappointing but I realize how lucky I was to get feedback last time as opposed to none at all now.
Is it just me or does the application to YC feel like a pitch to an investor? I understand that for very specific cases they might be different in that they can see some early potential. However, if you're not one of those lucky few, then it feels like if you're at the point where you can convince YC to invest, you're already not too far from being able to convince an investor to invest. E.g. I've gotten the advice from multiple people at or affiliated with YC: "get users and show growth". But, for me specifically, if I had users and growth already, there is little more that the money that YC would help me raise can do. If I got into YC earlier, I would have hired people to help build the product which people want. Yes, there is a lot of work to grow post product, but in my case, money wouldnt really help that much (my case is desktop software, so I dont really need more server capacity or have scaling issues like other companies do).
One of the things that I've found so challenging about applying for accelerators is that it's difficult to find examples of companies that got in or that didn't get in, and what they did for their applications. Every time I have come across one, I've learned a bit - like "that didn't work" or "that was a great idea" - around how they apply, pitch themselves or their product, etc.
Anyone who was rejected want to share any of their application info, like team or product demo videos, or their website and a one line pitch? I know you might not want to for competitive reasons, and I understand.
But there's always things we can learn from each other, so if you want to share I'm sure I'm not the only one who would appreciate seeing what didn't work. :-)
I'll share a bit. I'm a solo, international founder. I applied with a barely usable, very limited prototype, of a technically challenging project (involving A.I and machine learning). My video was viewed twice, and my demo was viewed, but no other action was taken within it. I was rejected.
I expected that, given that my prototype was pretty bad, and I have a lot going against me. It definitely lit a fire under me just to apply though - and the questions that the application asks, are things you really need to think about. I definitely don't regret applying. And the fact that my demo & video were viewed - makes me think that perhaps my idea is somewhat promising.
Newslines - The Wikipedia of News (a mix of Wikipedia, daily news and YouTube). Very experienced entrepreneurial team. Only direct competitor to Wikipedia. Applied as a project that allows greater diversity for content creators (unlike Wikipedia 80% of our contributors are women and minorities) Full product online and getting good traction. http://newslines.org/ Check our Paul Graham newsline: http://newslines.org/paul-graham/ Will try again next time. It's fun to make the application, really helps you think how to describe your business simply.
So, people optimize the application process to get in. That decrease the SNR for Y Combinator, which mean they have to work hard to separate the posers from the real thing.
> Don’t let funding take your eye off the goal: making something people want. Everything else, including going through Y Combinator, is there to support that goal but is not the goal itself.
It would be interesting to see a chart plotting over time the number of applicants in each batch who have applied to YC multiple times. Based on the number of folks here on HN who have apparently applied multiple times, and for different concepts no less, it seems plausible that a not insignificant percentage of the applicant pool now consists of folks who, contrary to YC's own advice, are more focused on getting accepted into YC than building a real business.
[+] [-] tomasien|11 years ago|reply
It's the same as how no student should ever PLAN to get into Harvard, and Harvard even has SATs and GPAs to rely on (fairly objective stats around which you can make a guess about your odds) while YC has only heuristics based on experience and founder reputation. Never judge yourself based on something that has an open application process - it doesn't define you, it defines them. No reason not to apply, but take it as a bonus if you get in, don't take it personally if you get rejected.
[+] [-] flipside|11 years ago|reply
For those with less experience, the disappointment will pass. Take a day if you need to reflect on what you're doing, why you're doing it and how you could do it better.
Rejection is fuel for the fire, use it to burn brighter going forward.
Next time, be so good they can't ignore you, simple as that.
[+] [-] paul|11 years ago|reply
Exactly right!
[+] [-] aliakhtar|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tpae|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stevephillips|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DevX101|11 years ago|reply
Redirect that energy to building your business. Build your product and get customers/users, which is the real endgame, not getting into YC or getting a check from a fancy Sandhill VC.
[+] [-] bosie|11 years ago|reply
clicking on 'contact' scrolls down and when it reaches the bottom it just snaps back to the top.
[+] [-] damurdock|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vishnupr|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onuryavuz|11 years ago|reply
During the application process I started to realize, YC asks all the right questions. Just trying to find proper answers is a huge step forward for the first timers, like us. We learned a lot.
I think, the only thing that missing is the feedback loop. I'm aware of the fact that there are more applicants than YC could accept, or provide a feedback. But after all, we still need a feedback.
After I saw the rejection email, first I planned to share our application in HN to get feedback from the community. But now I see this is a need for all the rejected applicants. I'm not sure what could be a better way for closing the feedback loop. Maybe, there's a start-up idea in here somewhere :)
[+] [-] zeeshanm|11 years ago|reply
Great things can happen when you're low on budget and there are numerous entrepreneurial stories about those early days. Sometimes it is much needed to go through the early struggles to come out even stronger in the end.
[+] [-] waterlesscloud|11 years ago|reply
Yikes! That's a major increase in applications. Has that number always grown that fast?
I wonder what the saturation point will be...
[+] [-] dvt|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Fando|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hillis|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dools|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taytus|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AustinPythonFTW|11 years ago|reply
YC is a for-profit, private enterprise that can do whatever it wants, and it is in the business of maximizing income, so it would be foolish for the organization not to act in a self-interested way, but just calling it like I see it (and again, it'd be great if there were any stats the organization could release to disprove any of the points above, but I understand that it has no obligation to do so).
[+] [-] jl|11 years ago|reply
We definitely fund people who have no connection to folks we already know, or Silicon Valley for that matter. And we also fund startups who are at the idea stage and have no traction (though traction does help).
I'm very sorry we rejected you, but we are honestly often wrong.
[+] [-] birken|11 years ago|reply
- You get a lot more 'no's than 'yes'es
- They don't give you a lot of feedback when they pass
- Having a previous relationship with them is helpful
- The more successful you are, the more they want to give you money
Unless you are starting a non-profit, this is just how it works. These people are investing, not donating to charity or your team's self-development. Get some traction and/or revenue and the game will flip around very quickly.
[+] [-] csa|11 years ago|reply
Assuming this is true, this must be one of the easiest things in the world to hack. I would be very worried about any aspiring tech entrepreneur who couldn't manage to connect with a group of people who are as open and as generous with their time as many of the YC alums are.
> tendency to fund those who need it the least
First, I wonder if this is really true. It may look that way, but I imagine that many of the companies are in the product/market fit stage. Some may find themselves actually in the problem/solution fit stage. I imagine few are in the straight-up scaling stage.
Second, from YC's perspective, I think that they should definitely have some companies in each class for which they will simply act as a multiplier -- that is, get the company to where it is going, just faster and (maybe) better.
Lastly, if traction and/or revenue really are the key to acceptance, aspiring YC companies could simply use this as a parameter to consider when developing their company. IMHO, this is a case of the tail wagging the dog, but it's something to consider.
[+] [-] Fando|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Udo|11 years ago|reply
Does anyone know if they still allow this, in principle? Or are batches now so saturated (with good ideas) that they dropped the option?
[+] [-] kevin|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] KetciaThach|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ninajlu|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lubos|11 years ago|reply
You have to optimize for what they want and considering how transparent the application process is, it's actually quite easy. PG's essays are step-by-step guides on how to "tick" all the right boxes. They even give you the list of ideas they wish to fund. How nice of them... No wonder YC has announced that quality of applications is increasing. It's not increasing because startups are getting better. It's increasing because more startups are optimizing.
Remember Nikki Durkin from 99dresses? She didn't just apply. She spent huge amount of time researching partners, their history, what they liked, what they wanted to hear... and she has delivered just that like a rockstar. How many promising founders are rejected because they just didn't bother to optimize like Durkin?
To me, if you get rejected, it just means you didn't put enough time into the application. If your goal is to get into YC, then keep trying, you will figure it out.
But in the end, if you are real entrepreneur, figure out what you are doing with your business. Don't optimize for YC, just do what you've got to do and if YC wants to join you for a ride, then fine. If not, too bad for them.
[+] [-] coffeemug|11 years ago|reply
Just doing what you do is the only thing that matters and will get you in, assuming you're doing the right thing. (Asking alums for feedback on the application is a very good way to make sure you're doing the right thing and your presentation doesn't suck)
[+] [-] 001sky|11 years ago|reply
isn't this logically absurd?
[+] [-] graycat|11 years ago|reply
Really the challenge here is common, nearly standard, and a very old story that goes back to nothing less than the Mother Goose children's story "The Little Red Hen": What the hen was doing was unusual and, therefore, not in the experience of others. Thus, no one would help her. But when she had hot, fragrant loaves of bread freshly out of her oven and eager, hungry, paying customers lined up to buy, lots of people were ready to help. But in the interim she had to work alone with just her own evaluation, creativity, and determination. No doubt that story is in Mother Goose because the situation was both common and ancient.
What is needed are better means of evaluating projects. For a special, relatively small, collection of projects, there are such means, highly polished, e.g., for grant applications to NSF, NIH, and DARPA, similarly for Ph.D. dissertation proposals, and also for a huge range of US DoD projects, e.g., the SR-71, the F-117, GPS. Generally these projects and their evaluations have much better batting average than Silicon Valley equity funded information technology start-up projects.
Maybe what Silicon Valley is doing is making money, and the YC $30+ billion is astoundingly impressive, but one major success can be worth $300 billion, 10 times as much, so that we have to suspect that better evaluations could lead to better returns.
[+] [-] MarkyPc3|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chacham15|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MCRed|11 years ago|reply
Anyone who was rejected want to share any of their application info, like team or product demo videos, or their website and a one line pitch? I know you might not want to for competitive reasons, and I understand.
But there's always things we can learn from each other, so if you want to share I'm sure I'm not the only one who would appreciate seeing what didn't work. :-)
[+] [-] aliakhtar|11 years ago|reply
I expected that, given that my prototype was pretty bad, and I have a lot going against me. It definitely lit a fire under me just to apply though - and the questions that the application asks, are things you really need to think about. I definitely don't regret applying. And the fact that my demo & video were viewed - makes me think that perhaps my idea is somewhat promising.
I plan on improving my product a lot and re-applying next batch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12DAjoONx9E&t=35s
[+] [-] sparkzilla|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] panther2k|11 years ago|reply
We are building a decentralized bank/crowdlending network on the blockchain.
[+] [-] kiba|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelchisari|11 years ago|reply
My startup is movie industry related, so maybe Los Angeles would be a better place to be. I'll post the startup site here when we launch.
[+] [-] 7Figures2Commas|11 years ago|reply
It would be interesting to see a chart plotting over time the number of applicants in each batch who have applied to YC multiple times. Based on the number of folks here on HN who have apparently applied multiple times, and for different concepts no less, it seems plausible that a not insignificant percentage of the applicant pool now consists of folks who, contrary to YC's own advice, are more focused on getting accepted into YC than building a real business.
[+] [-] paul|11 years ago|reply