cool video editing tool!
We tried to hustle our way into YC after we got rejected
141–150 of 169 posts
Re: We tried to hustle our way into YC after we got rejected
#142> We had positive feedback from YC...
There was a time when I thought positive feedback from a VC meant something. 2 startups and $16M in VC funding later I've realized that it doesn't. Having a VC tell you your startup is awesome is like having your mom tell you your startup is awesome. They have no incentive to be honest with you and every incentive to have you walk away with a positive impression of the firm.
Founders REALLY need to stop looking to venture capitalists for validation of their business. Your metrics are all the validation you need, especially if those metrics are profit or revenue. Putting confidence in the feedback of a VC can cause you to ignore warning signs.
Even if they write you a huge check, it doesn't mean you have a good business. All it means is that you are good at fundraising.
Re: We tried to hustle our way into YC after we got rejected
#143missiveapp.com and conferenceBadge.com, my two startups, have both been rejected at the interview phase. Our yearly revenue for both now stands in the 7 digits. We are still just a team of 3 + 1 employee, 100% bootstrapped. Life is good. My advice, keep pushing! https://missiveapp.com/ https://www.conferencebadge.com
OK, I'm stealing this idea. Just returned from an exhibition where this whole badge idea was implemented pretty poorly-clearly still a lot of space for improvements.
Re: We tried to hustle our way into YC after we got rejected
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
That seems like it was a failure of the interviewer to ask the right (or any?) clarifying questions.
Possibly, but the onus is on the applicant to drive through things like this, not the interviewers. Again, nobody in the room had the luxury of understanding what was happening at the time. Hopefully my experience can help others.
It's pragmatic advice for both sides - I would expect the interviewers to be doing lots of these interviews so it's something I would expect them to be familiar with.
Re: We tried to hustle our way into YC after we got rejected
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey Dalton, thanks for the answer, that's fair. I totally agree that in the long-term, moving and failing fast is a net positive for both founders and YC. I wonder how different the YC three-months experience is between founders who have product-market fit vs the ones who don't? It seems like there's a "cadence" to the program highly focused on growth culminating to demo day?
Tons of examples of no traction/fast moving teams out-performing, ie Brex pivoted and had no growth or traction at demo day and it worked out pretty well for them :) https://twitter.com/daltonc/status/1138952277404790784?s=21 Doing YC at their early state was perfect because it was the perfect environment to come up with an idea like Brex.
Hi Dalton OP here, appreciate your input here, Thank you.
Moving fast is something we are working at hard at. From a technical and creative perspective.
Correct me if I am wrong. When you say moving fast, do you mean being nimble and quick at pretty much everything, with the goal to find product-market fit?
Re: We tried to hustle our way into YC after we got rejected
#146Raise from another VC (if you need) and keep moving. Don't raise if you don't need to, obviously. Like dating, if they don't want you, it's their loss. Hounding them will only make you sound needy, and unfortunately people (especially investors) are wired to give to the people who least need it, in general.
Re: We tried to hustle our way into YC after we got rejected
#147I don't want to be a jerk to kids in their early 20s who are bootstrapping their startup idea, but reading this account would actually confirm for me why this team wasn't ready to be accepted into YC or a similar program. A big part of the onus of the original product, at least, as it was launched, was that it was "watermark free" and the way it was "sold" to end-users was that it was a free service. Now, I can under…
This read like a business school professor. All young businesses are a fluid experiment "out of business rationale" is a hindsight fluff statement. If rationale informed effective product then a lot more people were successful. Additionally, odds are that the best thing for the business (and founders) would being admitted to YC over any product change they could possible make. They had non zero odds and I think it wa…
> If rationale informed effective product then a lot more people were successful.
That's not necessarily true, as plenty of businesses fail because they don't have a business plan for their product. The world is littered with great products that failed because there was no business plan or the business plan wasn't sustainable. Obviously, having a business plan doesn't make a successful product (and I never one intimated otherwise), but in this case, the feedback from YC was about the business and not about the product.
>Additionally, odds are that the best thing for the business (and founders) would being admitted to YC over any product change they could possible make.
If by "best thing" you mean "could raise money to fund the product in absence of a business plan" -- you're probably right. Getting into YC or a similar accelerator would make raising money easier for sure. But getting in doesn't guarantee funding or success in any way shape or form.
>They had non zero odds and I think it was a clever plan all things considered. If YC is looking at founders above everything else and less product, these young dudes seem to be cut from the cloth.
I disagree that they had non zero odds. They were rejected and given a reason why. The response to that rejection didn't actually answer the critique by YC (and the founders don't seem to have understood what that critique was). You're right that the product doesn't always matter when it comes to who gets funding, but in this case, being "clever" just further proved that they didn't actually understand that core feedback, which is wholly independent of product.
Look, I hope these guys try again. I also hope they take up the offer for office hours and take that feedback into perfecting their business model and their product strategy so that they are more successful next time.
Re: We tried to hustle our way into YC after we got rejected
#148missiveapp.com and conferenceBadge.com, my two startups, have both been rejected at the interview phase. Our yearly revenue for both now stands in the 7 digits. We are still just a team of 3 + 1 employee, 100% bootstrapped. Life is good. My advice, keep pushing! https://missiveapp.com/ https://www.conferencebadge.com
With funding, you might be in the situation of having not a single cent more in revenue (possibly less, trying to buy growth) and failing hard because of having 30 employees more than you have now, and not the tiniest idea of how you could get by with less.
The intersection between the set of business opportunities that can work bootstrapped and set of business opportunities that work when strongly funded might be much smaller than one would naively assume.
Re: We tried to hustle our way into YC after we got rejected
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe I just don't get the Silicon Valley culture, or perhaps I'm missing something fundamental, but let me just get this straight: 1. Startup has no revenue whatsoever, but ostensibly have good product. They go pitch to investors and get rejected, likely because they have no revenue. 2. They hack around for 1 (!) weekend and get their MRR to $500. Five hundred bucks. They now go back to investors and say: hey look,…
Having $500 in MRR proves two things: 1. The product is something that people will pay for 2. The team can sell it, at least a little bit Both are huge validations of a startup
$500 and then some churn and poof...
You really need to do a stable couple of thousands for a couple of month to “know” you’re paid plans actually provide long term value. Or sell yearly plans.
Re: We tried to hustle our way into YC after we got rejected
#150There are tons of video editors, all the way back to Adobe Premiere. OpenShot, which is free and open source, isn't bad. What do these people have that they don't? (Yes, it's "in the cloud". So?)
I almost can't believe I had to scroll this far to find a sensible comment.
Honest question (as someone very ignorant about the business world), why do people spend money on this stuff? And why do so many people (based on the comments here) act like it's OK to create such products (i.e. products that bring literally nothing innovative or useful to the table)? By OK I mean ethically, considering that there are so many more pressing problems in the world.