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Ask HN: What are some examples of successful companies rejected by YC?

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41–50 of 61 posts

Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of successful companies rejected by YC?

#41

I co-founded a legal startup, and a funded YC company pivoted into our exact space. We applied and never even received an interview. I once did a Show HN about it that made the front page and was immediately removed, upon an email to dang my post was reinstated and I even received a comment/review by a YC partner. The review was overall complimentary, included actionable critiques and even included reasons why he sub…

Can you tell us what the startups did - "legal space" is very large and it's nice to know of successful bootstrap ideas - I think it helps me look out the window for my own

Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of successful companies rejected by YC?

#42

I applied to YC six times over the last 2.5 years with the same idea - https://yathletics.com . Got rejected every time but interviewed with them twice. The first time I applied was before I launched our first product and had $0 in revenue. The last time I applied, our yearly revenue was almost $1M, and we're still just getting started. The reason for rejection was same at both times - I didn't have a clear strategy…

> We make products that our users absolutely love and have seen phenomenal growth, and YC understands that. But it seems like it's very important to them that you are able to clearly articulate what your business will look like in ten years when it's a billion dollar company.

In life in general the "talk a good game" part plays particular significance in people's decision making even if what is being said doesn't hold water. Of course if your idea is super special in some way or you have some other huge advantage that gets peoples attention that doesn't matter but that covers edge cases, not normals.

Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of successful companies rejected by YC?

#43
post #3

> YCombinator is not the only way to launch a startup It would be a stretch to even say it's a common way to launch a startup

It's a testament to this advertising machine we're currently posting on.

It's actually fascinating along those lines how much of a halo is around something that you read everyday and pay attention to. For example I don't read reddit and never have. If I sat on a plane next to someone important from reddit (except for Alexis) I could care less. But if I sat on a plane next to someone from YC (or even a top commenter on HN) I would definitely be all into talking to them because of the halo.

Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of successful companies rejected by YC?

#44

I co-founded a legal startup, and a funded YC company pivoted into our exact space. We applied and never even received an interview. I once did a Show HN about it that made the front page and was immediately removed, upon an email to dang my post was reinstated and I even received a comment/review by a YC partner. The review was overall complimentary, included actionable critiques and even included reasons why he sub…

Can you tell us what the startups did - "legal space" is very large and it's nice to know of successful bootstrap ideas - I think it helps me look out the window for my own

Imagine you get a speeding ticket and wanted to hire a lawyer to fight it (not exactly sure if traffic tickets in the UK what they are in the US...basically a tax on the populace).

Here is the problem: to hire a lawyer, you must discuss your case with a human from the law firm who can evaluate the facts and generate a fee. In other words for a legal fee to be competitive you obviously can't charge the same for a seat belt ticket as a accident with a fatality. But, probably the real truth of the legal industry, especially tickets, is that fees are more often based on what they think a client can and will pay without calling another firm to compare prices.

As far as I can tell this is why the YC company needed to raise funding, so they could hire a staff to evaluate the tickets, act as a middle man between potential client and the lawyer, and then deliver the fee/retain the client. My belief is they are trying to experiment with a single flat fee across a jurisdiction (i.e. $150 for any ticket in California), again a problem because not all cases are the same and such a model is not fair to the client or the lawyer.

What we did was invent a business method to automatically calculate a legal fee for individual cases. Our method allowed clients to calculate their own fees (transparent pricing) and hire a lawyer 24/7 without the need for staff (automation).

Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of successful companies rejected by YC?

#45
post #6

We've been turned down twice with ConferenceBadge.com, once at the interview. It's now projected to make around $750 000/year. We were rejected for good reasons, it's definitely not a billion dollars business. More recently we've been rejected three times with Missive, ( https://missiveapp.com ), still not financially successful, but starting to receive a pretty good vibe from early users + big potential. I wrote abo…

I am a little curious. ConferenceBadge seems to be an excellent idea but how did you guys manage to pull off that yearly revenue with that pricing? If I am not missing something, that would translate to like million badges a year.

We are deeply integrated in Eventbrite dashboard + have really good SEO.

Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of successful companies rejected by YC?

#46

I applied to YC six times over the last 2.5 years with the same idea - https://yathletics.com . Got rejected every time but interviewed with them twice. The first time I applied was before I launched our first product and had $0 in revenue. The last time I applied, our yearly revenue was almost $1M, and we're still just getting started. The reason for rejection was same at both times - I didn't have a clear strategy…

This is not just a YC thing, it's par for the course for most SV VC's. Their MO is to spread lots of bets around, expecting 99% of those bets will go to 0, 0.9% may just break even, and 0.1% may be the next Google, Facebook, etc. and make back far more than all their other losses combined.

That's a bit of a simplification and exaggeration, but the general idea is that if you want to raise money in SV you need a plausible case for how your startup will either become a unicorn (>= $1B valuation) or disrupt some really big established thing. YC also has appears to have a preference for technological advances - "breakthrough technology" - over the status quo.

Looking at your website I would have the same question as YC - competent-looking execution and product design, which if continued could potentially make it to >= $1B market cap, but it appears your business model is, at best, attempting an incremental improvement over UnderArmor and the like. What big problem are you solving, or big established things are you disrupting? What new market or industry are you creating? What breakthrough technology are you deploying that enables you to execute better than entrenched competitors in a way they can't easily replicate?

My sense is that's more along the lines of what they're looking for.

Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of successful companies rejected by YC?

#47

I co-founded a legal startup, and a funded YC company pivoted into our exact space. We applied and never even received an interview. I once did a Show HN about it that made the front page and was immediately removed, upon an email to dang my post was reinstated and I even received a comment/review by a YC partner. The review was overall complimentary, included actionable critiques and even included reasons why he sub…

Was your post antagonistic towards the YC company or removed for an otherwise valid and transparent reason? If hacker news is removing posts by competitors, or giving their startup founders free range to remove posts I should probably start using it differently.

Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of successful companies rejected by YC?

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a runner, and just ordered two pairs of socks! seems like a great business to me. I have no insight into what could/couldn't be a billion dollar business, but I'm also positive that not every successful company needs to be a billion dollar business.

I'd really like to hear a followup on how these socks compare to Thorlos and Balegas.

I'll report back! my preference is for Balegas over Thorlos, I feel that Thorlos quality has dropped off in recent years. I'm happy with Balegas, but go through them fairly quickly, as I run 200-250 miles/month.

Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of successful companies rejected by YC?

#49

I co-founded a legal startup, and a funded YC company pivoted into our exact space. We applied and never even received an interview. I once did a Show HN about it that made the front page and was immediately removed, upon an email to dang my post was reinstated and I even received a comment/review by a YC partner. The review was overall complimentary, included actionable critiques and even included reasons why he sub…

Was your post antagonistic towards the YC company or removed for an otherwise valid and transparent reason? If hacker news is removing posts by competitors, or giving their startup founders free range to remove posts I should probably start using it differently.

My Show HN post didn't mention the YC company, and the post was reinstated without any revisions of the post itself after I emailed dang.

Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of successful companies rejected by YC?

#50

I applied to YC six times over the last 2.5 years with the same idea - https://yathletics.com . Got rejected every time but interviewed with them twice. The first time I applied was before I launched our first product and had $0 in revenue. The last time I applied, our yearly revenue was almost $1M, and we're still just getting started. The reason for rejection was same at both times - I didn't have a clear strategy…

With a self-hosted on-line store, why are your prices still relatively high? Wouldn't you open up the market by lowering the MRP?
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