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I wish people wouldn't treat us like an oracle that can predict startups' success. If only. The fact is we read applications fast and make plenty of mistakes. One thing YC has taught me is that this must be true of practically every application process. For some reason, both the people who are accepted and rejected in any application process tend to read too much into it. (Is there a name for this phenomenon?)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The question I have is "Win what ?" There's no doubt getting into YC is a feather in one's cap. But for what purpose? What's the plan here? That's what struck me as surprising in this story. "I want to be a YC startup to say I was a YC startup and I'll do anything to get it" doesn't make a lot of sense. If you aren't, to use your terminology, leveraging that for something bigger that you already had your heart set on…
There's something to be said for having a clear goal, but there's also something to be said for establishing the conditions such that when you do identify your goal, you're in a better position to be able to meet it. Years ago, people weren't doing MBAs at Harvard because they already had a business plan. It was because it made it more likely they'd succeed later one when they had their plan.
The narrative here is "I want to succeed/win, getting into YC is going to help me, therefore I must get into YC and I'll do whatever it takes even though every time I've tried so far I've failed." The seemingly obvious question here is: what are you trying to succeed/win at? It obviously wasn't a product you're passionate about (although going into the fourth try, it sounds like the latest pivot is growing on you). Fame, power, money, personal validation? 2.3 kids and a white picket fence? YC isn't the only way to get it, and it's probably one of the harder ways to do it.
If it's common to treat YC as a Harvard MBA—something like "if I have it, everything in life will almost magically work out for me"—that's pretty interesting and surprising to me. I always thought it was more about speeding up getting a specific vision or idea to market, or at the very least iterating on an idea until it grows into something huge.
I wish people wouldn't treat us like an oracle that can predict startups' success. If only. The fact is we read applications fast and make plenty of mistakes. One thing YC has taught me is that this must be true of practically every application process. For some reason, both the people who are accepted and rejected in any application process tend to read too much into it. (Is there a name for this phenomenon?)
If you really wanted to avoid the emotional consequences of this decision, you could make it completely random. It would be not only stress-relieving but an act of humility given the truth: that you will never be able to predict the success of these companies.
You have a peice of information they do not: you know that it's nothing personal. But if you tell a reject that it isn't personal there are two scenarios that are most prominent in their minds: that you tell the truth, or you're trying to make them feel better while there is something subtle wrong about themselves that they can't find. The latter option has much more weight put on it because the consequences are more dire. If they have two options with equal probabilities, as far as they know, but with one result being far more devastating than the other, it would be stupid to neglect this possibility, because what if it's true? If this was tribal warfare this could mean life or death, people aren't just going to believe your words.
This highlights part of the HN/YC culture that just doesn't resonate with me at all. I like coming up with creative ideas and working on fun stuff, but it seems totally backwards to me to repeatedly try to conjure a startup out of thin air in the hopes of getting funded. One of the parts that gave me pause was the idea of somebody furiously learning programming to facilitate building an app to teach others to program…
I have always been a bit confused by this also. I think I am most likely missing something here, but I've thought about this a lot and can't figure it out. Overall, I think YC and friends provide a net gain to society, encouraging entrepreneurial ideals and bringing a few really great ideas to fruition. But for the rest... I don't know. This is certainly not universal, but it seems like a bunch of YC funded startups…
We seem to have this discussion too much. Startup culture is business culture. Hacker culture (making and breaking) to me almost seems diametrically opposed to startup culture (making and selling). Startups don't want to reinvent the wheel so much that they rely on the big guns (Apple, Google) to do the foundation work (e.g., making an OS). Twenty to thirty years from now, who will know how to make an operating system. College students online lament that there are no challenging programming jobs anymore so they can't use the deep knowledge from their CS degree. It seems to me that the most challenging stuff that you can make a lot of money from today is a Mac application. My dream is to see a resurgence of MIT and Unix hacker culture.
I know my writing style is disjointed and awkward, so sorry about that :P
I wish people wouldn't treat us like an oracle that can predict startups' success. If only. The fact is we read applications fast and make plenty of mistakes. One thing YC has taught me is that this must be true of practically every application process. For some reason, both the people who are accepted and rejected in any application process tend to read too much into it. (Is there a name for this phenomenon?)
Yes, it's known as the "Spotlight Effect." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlight_effect - http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-big-questions/201111... We humans tend to assume that everyone sees something about us, when a much smaller amount actually notice (and an even smaller amount actually care). This has rejected startups thinking "What did I do" when it really has nothing to do with them at all (just that…
Has there ever been a write-up on "how to get into YC" by someone who followed such a guide and got in?
- Someone who was rejected 4+ times, and doesn't believe in that kind of stuff anymore
Am I the only one who thinks the poster sounds like an oblivious narcissistic bro jock?
I wish people wouldn't treat us like an oracle that can predict startups' success. If only. The fact is we read applications fast and make plenty of mistakes. One thing YC has taught me is that this must be true of practically every application process. For some reason, both the people who are accepted and rejected in any application process tend to read too much into it. (Is there a name for this phenomenon?)
> I think that this in and of itself was the reason we were rejected. We hadn’t done a whole lot of customer discovery, didn’t have a fleshed out business model, and were banking on the idea that once we got into YC we would take care of all that. We were counting on YC to create our business, not just accelerate it. I believe this showed in our application, and is ultimately what hurt us the most. I'm learning this…