31–40 of 85 posts
Participate in the Startup School is something that any rejected startup should do, imho. It is true many rejected people will do great companies, so invest time in knowledge is better that be down for a simple rejection. https://www.startupschool.org/
It's now overrated anyway. You can hear it from many people unaffiliated with YC, but even some recent YC founders. It's now mostly "YC stamp of approval" that increases your brand and access to good investors on demo day. Everything else (e.g. educational value, sense of community) gets degraded due to huge batch sizes (294 founders in S17) and most of the things YC teaches becoming public knowledge.
Would love to see the anti portfolio list of YC.[1] FWIW - We have been rejected 3 times from YC over the last 3 years. We did not take it personally as OP said, put our heads down and got working on our startup. After lot of hard work, setbacks and near death experiences, we are now currently growing ~10% MoM and generating millions in ARR. YC or any other investor/accelerator should never be the make or break thing…
BVP's anti-portfolio is absolutely beautiful. It's so difficult to tell a success from a failure. Sequoia, on the other hand . . .
Would love to see the anti portfolio list of YC.[1] FWIW - We have been rejected 3 times from YC over the last 3 years. We did not take it personally as OP said, put our heads down and got working on our startup. After lot of hard work, setbacks and near death experiences, we are now currently growing ~10% MoM and generating millions in ARR. YC or any other investor/accelerator should never be the make or break thing…
BVP's anti-portfolio is absolutely beautiful. It's so difficult to tell a success from a failure. Sequoia, on the other hand . . .
I've always felt more people should spend some time in sales to harden their skin a little bit. Anything, including running a startup and being successful is a numbers game. If you change your mindset from, "Oh we got rejected, we must be doing something wrong." to "Oh we got rejected, it just means we're now closer to getting accepted by some other incubator, VC, angle investor, etc." The guys I worked with in sever…
There are many stages for a nascent startup to fail. Getting into the incubator is only the first step, and perhaps the easiest to give up at. I would encourage all people who got rejected to fail-fast and keep trying . I have a friend who got into an incubator with a crypto idea and very positive feedback on the idea. Six months after funding, the whole thing imploded due to personal conflict. At the time, my friend…
I have a few friends who fought to grow their company out over years and ended up doing very well. Funding just means more resources to execute the idea, but doesn't ensure success at all.
‘Nuff said.
My cofounder and I don't regret applying. We did it mostly for publicity. We already have pretty good traction and funding so the rejection doesn't really slow us down. I never thought we had much of a shot getting accepted anyway just because our team and product are really out of the norm.
Let your haters be your motivators.