Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Startup School: Every Company That Applied Is Now Accepted

blog.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 307 posts

Re: Startup School: Every Company That Applied Is Now Accepted

#191

Post by sanjanamane »

r_singh wrote: post #178
sanjanamane wrote: post #156

I got a rejected email first and then I got the accepted email with an apology. So I am assuming I was among the originally accepted startups, now since everyone is going to be accepted, the originally accepted startups will have a disadvantage and will we still get an advisor? The thing to rejoice is being accepted out of a pool of competition but now since everyone is accepted, its just something usual.

Does your email say you're accepted to the advisor track? That's how you know if you will be a part of a group that gets an advisor.

Yes, it says I am in the advisor track but now since everyone is in the advisor track, I am expecting it to change?

Re: Startup School: Every Company That Applied Is Now Accepted

#193

Post by r_singh »

sanjanamane wrote: post #191
r_singh wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does your email say you're accepted to the advisor track? That's how you know if you will be a part of a group that gets an advisor.

Yes, it says I am in the advisor track but now since everyone is in the advisor track, I am expecting it to change?

Not everyone is in the advisor track. About 4000 out of the 15000 are in it—is what some of the comments are saying.

The applicants that were initially erroneously accepted and then rejected are in something like an audit track, except they will have access to the forums and will stand a chance to compete for the $10k (I think).

Hope that clears your doubt. Congrats!

Are you a founder based in India? (just taking a wild guess from your username and time zone activity, asking because I'm from Mumbai, got accepted to the advisor track and would love to connect with my peers from Startup School as well!)

Re: Startup School: Every Company That Applied Is Now Accepted

#194

Post by dang »

funnynoodles wrote: post #169
solarkraft wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Respectfully, you don’t see any reasons this would be a bad idea?

It's fine to disagree substantively (e.g. like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17807427 did), but not fine to troll the thread like this. Please stop.

Re: Startup School: Every Company That Applied Is Now Accepted

#195

Post by rezultant »

kcorbitt wrote: post #45
lugg wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wild Speculation: typo in a limit clause. Probably only a few extra thousand got accepted but instead of weed them out they figured fuck it. I'm going to also guess and say user accounts were created in a not easily rolled back way after the fact.

Actually, we just literally reversed the SQL queries for the emails we sent out for accepted/rejected companies – and then didn't immediately realize our mistake. It's been a pretty tough day here at YC but we're all really happy with the final decision we came to!

Looks like you do mailing old (hackers) way - via SQL queries :)

Re: Startup School: Every Company That Applied Is Now Accepted

#196

Post by samatman »

threeseed wrote: post #170
fastball wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many companies are still on the advisor track and get that advisor. If you don't find any value without an instructor, then you don't need to participate, but the course material is still there if you want it. Seems like a no-lose to me.

Well technically there is a loss for those on the advisor track. Because you are now competing with 15K teams for the 100 sponsorship spots instead of 4K. But to be honest I don't think it would make all that much of a difference. The top 100 companies will deserve their spot regardless of the competition.

You already were competing with 15K teams.

They're skipping the step where they eliminate the 11K which the advisor-tier have already beaten once.

This will affect the odds of winning, but by how much?

I guess we're going to find out when we see the final ratio of advised/unadvised startups who win sponsorship.

Re: Startup School: Every Company That Applied Is Now Accepted

#197

Post by leon_moodley »

I've just been catching up on mails at like 2.30am and I also received the initial acceptance and then the decline. I must admit that I didn't take the rejection as personally as some might have. This is a norm in startup life. Whilst I am thankful that everyone was accepted into the program, what would have been of great value to me was understanding why I wasn't accepted, learning from that feedback and applying again. Given the amount of competition in the tech space its nice to know what your shortcomings are. I think perhaps in the next batch there could be some scoring criteria perhaps. I assume that if X amount of people are shortlisted there was some sort of acceptance criteria and someone experienced rated your pitch anyway ? Big up to y combinator for owning up to the mistake made. Many other organizations would have just moved on.

Re: Startup School: Every Company That Applied Is Now Accepted

#198

Post by dang »

telltruth wrote: post #182
dang wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make a good point about withstanding rejection. But from the discussions that I overheard this afternoon, part of the motivation is that it's what the YC partners wanted to do anyway. That is, it's not only about making people feel better (though we certainly do want that), but also about realizing the original vision. I think Adora is planning to write a blog post about this. If it works out, then the mistake wi…

Could you please let me know if I am banned? I criticized Sam Altman and since then I get error posting any new story “you are posting too fast”. Thanks.

You're not banned, and we don't ban people for "criticizing Sam Altman". But you have been breaking the HN guidelines badly and when people do that we rate limit their accounts. That's one way we have of trying to stave off the decline of this forum.

We're happy to take rate limits off if people give us reason to believe that they will follow the guidelines in the future. Among other things that requires being civil, which "I love your naive hero worship", "What the F are you smoking", and so on, definitely are not.

The guidelines also ask you to email us instead of posting off-topic moderation questions to threads, especially because it's random whether or not we see them there. Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules more carefully from now on?

Re: Startup School: Every Company That Applied Is Now Accepted

#199

Post by dang »

shawn wrote: post #167
dang wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make a good point about withstanding rejection. But from the discussions that I overheard this afternoon, part of the motivation is that it's what the YC partners wanted to do anyway. That is, it's not only about making people feel better (though we certainly do want that), but also about realizing the original vision. I think Adora is planning to write a blog post about this. If it works out, then the mistake wi…

I felt so bad for whoever made the email mistake. I hope they're feeling alright. It's a bug everyone could see themselves letting slip through.

I checked with him and he's fine, but I think probably also in shock. In case it helps, I haven't seen any signs of blame; everyone knows we could easily have done it ourselves. The general feeling seems to be that it motivated us to do something that we wanted to do in the first place, but thought we couldn't.
Post reply on HN