41–50 of 85 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
BVP's anti-portfolio is absolutely beautiful. It's so difficult to tell a success from a failure. Sequoia, on the other hand . . .
What do you mean? Those companies were all successes
An anti-portfolio is the companies they rejected but went on to be successful.
We applied to YC once and were rejected. Didn't take it personally but since we were in a very early stage, we dropped the idea. I've personally found the YC application extremely gratifying to write. It does help you answer those key difficult questions that you'd have otherwise glossed over because of complacency or over confidence. What I've thought of doing is to fill the YC application for the next idea that I g…
We applied to YC once and were rejected. Didn't take it personally but since we were in a very early stage, we dropped the idea. I've personally found the YC application extremely gratifying to write. It does help you answer those key difficult questions that you'd have otherwise glossed over because of complacency or over confidence. What I've thought of doing is to fill the YC application for the next idea that I g…
Is there a link to the application?
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 . . .
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.
I have experience with small business, although not with YC. Those benefits are MASSIVE and should not be underestimated.
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.
> It's now mostly "YC stamp of approval" that increases your brand and access to good investors on demo day. I have experience with small business, although not with YC. Those benefits are MASSIVE and should not be underestimated.
IMO investors ability to invest in startups have improved. If top investors are not able to find you on your own, you are not likely to get the check from them anyway. I speak it from position of not going to YC, but doing in-person pitches with half of "top 10" VCs, and some of those with partners.
The only exception may be if you are not outside of current investment trends, but you are making lots of revenue. In such case you probably shouldn't get VC money anyway.
> YC stamp of approval
That would indeed have helped in some situations. It's case by case call whether it's worth the equity. Just be sure you don't do it for vanity to show off your friends that you got into YC.
We applied to YC last winter and got an interview, but ultimately we weren't accepted.
As a founder you're obviously incredibly enthusiastic about your idea and think it's brilliant, and YC is usually an early stop in a company's life. So, to hear a 'no' from a well-respected source before you even really get started is definitely an ego blow.
What mostly sucks about getting rejected is that YC says repeatedly that they accept teams, not products. So when we were rejected, I immediately took it as a personal affront: Clearly they didn't like me, my co-founder, or our dynamic, all of which inspired that (admittedly immature) defense mechanism of "We're great people, so you're dumb and wrong!"
However.
Once we had gotten over it and gone through the ringer of raising funding, you start taking it significantly less personally. Some VCs don't believe in entire sectors of businesses, so it's an automatic 'no' if you're in one of them. People can and will say 'no' because they're having a bad day, or you remind them of someone they don't like, or they had a bad experience with a similar company. Not that there aren't nuggets of wisdom to be gained from the 'no's, because obviously there are, but not every failure is a lesson necessarily.
All that to say, I think it's ok to take it a little personally. Maybe you should, even. But then you have to get back on the horse and get back to it.
I still believe the idea has merit, so I keep poking at it here and there. I spent money on design work and it's incorporated, but I don't have a partner or support mechanism.
I had a BizSpark account, but I "graduated" in February, so I can't host the API for free anymore. I was considering redeveloping the API in serverless AWS, but that will take time. I have a working API in .NET Web API.
So I'm I'm missing a place to deploy my API (and an Identity Server implementation for OAuth2) and an iOS developer to implement the designs.
Looking for advice...and sure, it may sound like I don't care enough and that's the death of many a startup, but I do care. I want to see the app completed and get a chance to work on the business model (and since it's a social networking app, that's no small thing).
All the good and bad advice is welcome.
The connections seem nice and everyone is talented obviously.
Keep pushing on and don't let a YC rejection bother you too much. As mrburton said, if it slows you down, you're probably doing something wrong.
Honestly, bootstrapping can be very advantageous to your startup because it keeps you on your toes.