Naturally, YC cannot accept everyone that applies. We know that many YC alumni have gone on to be successful, but we don't hear too much about the companies that were rejected and have now gone on to become going concerns. YCombinator is not the only way to launch a startup. How many that are turned away actually continue working on their startups, and successfully?
Ask HN: What are some examples of successful companies rejected by YC?
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Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of successful companies rejected by YC?
#2Here's a list from a couple of years ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7122999
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of successful companies rejected by YC?
#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
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of successful companies rejected by YC?
#4I actually asked this a few months ago. Here is the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11229700
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of successful companies rejected by YC?
#5Good founders use rejection for information and motivation. I'm pretty sure the list will be large.
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of successful companies rejected by YC?
#6We'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 about how we manage the two projects side by side with a small team of 4. https://medium.com/missive-app/successfully-bootstrapped-a-p...
Everyone is biased towards themselves, but still, I think we're a high quality, high achievers team that should have been accepted. You can now troll :).
We will reapply until we are in or until it doesn't make sense anymore. The value proposition of YC is that good + life is an adventure.
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of successful companies rejected by YC?
#7We'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…
Hey just a little thing on your website - the headline "How it works?" is a bit weird, maybe it should be "How does it work?" ?
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of successful companies rejected by YC?
#8We'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…
Hey just a little thing on your website - the headline "How it works?" is a bit weird, maybe it should be "How does it work?" ?
Good catch, I've just removed the "?".
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of successful companies rejected by YC?
#9SendGrid and Buffer are the two biggest I have heard of.
Surely there must be more? Otherwise either their success picking good companies is amazing or the program itself is a huge advantage?
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of successful companies rejected by YC?
#1010Stories was rejected 3 times in the last year. We ended up joining TrackMaven about a month ago and are building our product with them.
Strictly speaking, 10Stories isn't a going concern, but TrackMaven Attribution certainly is. We didn't go forward on the acquisition because we ran out of money. Quite the opposite: we had seen enough traction that the acquisition offer from TrackMaven effectively got us through accelerator + seed round. So we decided to skip the 6 months of dancing around and go right to the part where we are hiring a team and getting early users from the TrackMaven customer base.
We're only 1 month in, but this was clearly the faster path to market. Maybe it could have gone as quickly with YC -- who knows?