Ask HN: Which successful startups were rejected by YC? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Which successful startups were rejected by YC?

#11

Post by maxerickson » Sat, Mar 05, 2016, 5:40 PM UTC

ig1 wrote: post #10

Companies which have publicly disclosed that were rejected by YC and have since raised >$20m: * Chartboost * Sendgrid * LightSail I've seen it claimed that Couchbase should be on this list, but I've never seen a primary source which verifies that they were rejected from YC.

Damien Katz was rejected:

http://damienkatz.net/2006/11/how_not_to_pitc.html

Whether that counts for Couchbase is another question.

(I guess it probably does)

Re: Ask HN: Which successful startups were rejected by YC?

#12

Post by p4wnc6 » Sat, Mar 05, 2016, 5:41 PM UTC

mkagenius wrote: post #5

quadrature wrote: post #4

How do you define successful ?.

Success is a journey that starts with a "?" (question mark) and end with "." (fullstop)

So in Python, success is a regular expression that matches zero or one occurrences any character except newline? I've been doing it wrong!

Re: Ask HN: Which successful startups were rejected by YC?

#13

Post by rajacombinator » Sat, Mar 05, 2016, 5:44 PM UTC

PG offered a good proxy for this a while back. He said if you look at the top companies from other accelerators, most of them probably applied to YC also.

Re: Ask HN: Which successful startups were rejected by YC?

#14

Post by kzhahou » Sat, Mar 05, 2016, 5:44 PM UTC

mkagenius wrote: post #5

quadrature wrote: post #4

How do you define successful ?.

Success is a journey that starts with a "?" (question mark) and end with "." (fullstop)

Failure also starts with a "?" and ends with a "." :-)

Re: Ask HN: Which successful startups were rejected by YC?

#15

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 05, 2016, 5:48 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Which successful startups were rejected by YC?

#16

Post by mw67 » Sat, Mar 05, 2016, 5:49 PM UTC

Previously discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9413204

Re: Ask HN: Which successful startups were rejected by YC?

#17

Post by mcminno782 » Sat, Mar 05, 2016, 5:49 PM UTC

Branch Metrics

They were prepivot (Kindrid Prints) and YC didn't like their idea

Re: Ask HN: Which successful startups were rejected by YC?

#18

Post by ygra » Sat, Mar 05, 2016, 5:52 PM UTC

p4wnc6 wrote: post #12

mkagenius wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Success is a journey that starts with a "?" (question mark) and end with "." (fullstop)

So in Python, success is a regular expression that matches zero or one occurrences any character except newline? I've been doing it wrong!

I'm fairly sure Python would throw an error if you treated that as a regular expression.

Re: Ask HN: Which successful startups were rejected by YC?

#19

Post by brudgers » Sat, Mar 05, 2016, 5:59 PM UTC

My understanding is that a meaningful fraction of YC companies and founders were rejected by YC before acceptance in a later batch.

Re: Ask HN: Which successful startups were rejected by YC?

#20

Post by w1ntermute » Sat, Mar 05, 2016, 6:11 PM UTC

rajacombinator wrote: post #13

PG offered a good proxy for this a while back. He said if you look at the top companies from other accelerators, most of them probably applied to YC also.

I wonder if investors consider it a negative to be a top company in another accelerator then.

"Did you apply to and get rejected by YC?" must be a common question many investors now ask of companies that aren't YC alumni.