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Tell HN: Rejected from Y Combinator? Don't be upset or quit

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Re: Tell HN: Rejected from Y Combinator? Don't be upset or quit

#61

Post by curo »

Don't be upset or quit, but I think it's also good to wonder why. Perhaps it's just not a VC opportunity; are you okay with growing a more organic company with smaller revenue? Maybe you're not a clear communicator; do you need to work at it or is your idea hard to communicate? Is that indicative of a problem?

We got a rejection letter this morning. Definitely not going to quit. We hit a quarter million in our first year, cracked a tough technical problem, and are significantly growing end-user usage every week. We got one video view, so it's prompted to me to dial back the confidence and write a list of all the reasons our application was thrown out and that process has been very helpful.

Also, remember YC has open sourced a ton of its knowledge (Startup School, Stanford Course, PG essays, Sam Altman Playbook), so if you read a bit every week you have their guidance for free. And maybe you'll be better prepared for a Series A 9 months from now after getting into the next batch. Life's about good timing.

Re: Tell HN: Rejected from Y Combinator? Don't be upset or quit

#62

Post by l1n »

Mononokay wrote: post #16
BIackSwan wrote: post #9

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 . . .

Interesting that Tesla is on that list: I think it's yet to be sen if they can make it through their current crises.

Re: Tell HN: Rejected from Y Combinator? Don't be upset or quit

#63

Post by mswen »

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #20
quantumwoke wrote: post #8

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…

On the flip side, the toughest thing sometimes with startups is to decide when to draw that line in the sand where you can say "okay, this isn't working, time to move on." You tend to bias yourself and your success. The YC partners are smart and have generally been right every single time when something I was working on wasn't going to work.

Your comment echos a conversation I was having with my wife the other day as she was reading me bits from Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance Book by Angela Duckworth.

As you might infer from the title the thesis is that Grit is a very powerful force. My comment in our discussion was that this whole body of social science research and life/career advice comes into conflict with other bodies of advice about cutting one's losses, the value of killing 'failing' projects early, avoiding the trap of sunk costs.

How do we personally know or offer advice to others about whether current difficulties are likely to be overcome by renewed effort and persistence and when do we say it isn't working, try something very different?

Re: Tell HN: Rejected from Y Combinator? Don't be upset or quit

#64

Post by benrawk »

This is ridiculous. Rejection sucks, and it will likely slow you down a little bit for some time. That’s okay, and it is okay to feel bad. Over time, however, you will get over it and become better because of it. But if you are slowed down you aren’t doing anything wrong, you are human.

Re: Tell HN: Rejected from Y Combinator? Don't be upset or quit

#65

Post by yosho »

We applied I think in 2010, got rejected. This was when YC was still fairly young. so arguably competition was even less than it is today.

Our company now does over $100M ARR and still growing. We learned a lot along the way, to be fair, I don't think I would have accepted us either at the time. Just take it as a learning experience and get better, don't let rejection stop you. I couldn't tell you how many "NOs" we've gotten in our company's lifespan.

Re: Tell HN: Rejected from Y Combinator? Don't be upset or quit

#66

Post by SamReidHughes »

l1n wrote: post #62
Mononokay wrote: post #16

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 . . .

Interesting that Tesla is on that list: I think it's yet to be sen if they can make it through their current crises.

They IPO'd.

Re: Tell HN: Rejected from Y Combinator? Don't be upset or quit

#67

Post by dtawfik1 »

dahart wrote: post #60
BIackSwan wrote: post #9

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…

> Would love to see the anti portfolio list of YC. That would be interesting! I'd also love to see the list of both rejected and accepted applications that failed. BVP's "anti-portfolio" is a list of massive successes they happened to pass on. It wouldn't be as fun to look at the list of actual failures they passed on, or the failures they funded, but that might be even more instructive, right? > YC or any other inve…

>Personally, early on, I made the mistake of thinking that an investor rejection somehow reflected on the viability of my ideas or my business, that they knew something I didn't.

Spot on. An idea stage company is a theory. Validation occurs through real users. To become despondent because an investor didn't believe in your theory is not allowing yourself to really test the viability of your project. If users don't buy into your idea then you have a problem, but you have to play the experiment out.

Re: Tell HN: Rejected from Y Combinator? Don't be upset or quit

#68

Post by jacquesm »

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #20
quantumwoke wrote: post #8

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…

On the flip side, the toughest thing sometimes with startups is to decide when to draw that line in the sand where you can say "okay, this isn't working, time to move on." You tend to bias yourself and your success. The YC partners are smart and have generally been right every single time when something I was working on wasn't going to work.

That's because the vast majority of the start-ups won't work and all YC has to do is to pick the best from a batch, not viable start-ups in a vacuum. The more background data they have the better their decisions. Classes and the alumni network are the reason YC scales the way it does.

Re: Tell HN: Rejected from Y Combinator? Don't be upset or quit

#69

Post by jacquesm »

mswen wrote: post #63
Hydraulix989 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the flip side, the toughest thing sometimes with startups is to decide when to draw that line in the sand where you can say "okay, this isn't working, time to move on." You tend to bias yourself and your success. The YC partners are smart and have generally been right every single time when something I was working on wasn't going to work.

Your comment echos a conversation I was having with my wife the other day as she was reading me bits from Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance Book by Angela Duckworth. As you might infer from the title the thesis is that Grit is a very powerful force. My comment in our discussion was that this whole body of social science research and life/career advice comes into conflict with other bodies of advice about cu…

There are some examples of people plugging away on a 'failed' project for decades and eventually striking it rich.

Re: Tell HN: Rejected from Y Combinator? Don't be upset or quit

#70

Post by ScottBurson »

san17 wrote: post #57

Do we have to refill founder info section while reapplying to YC or just startup info and progress ? Didn't keep backup of founder info.

My recollection is that some of the founder info fields got blanked. Save it if you think you'll want it.
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