YC is Wrong About You • Hacker News Board

Re: YC is Wrong About You

#21

Post by vaksel » Tue, Apr 07, 2009, 2:26 PM UTC

fiaz wrote: post #17

No they are not. YC has more experience than you. YC has more success than you. If they turned you down, listen to the "why" and make the adjustments necessary to be successful. Consider it a badge of honor that they even gave you the time of day. Take the information, feedback, advice, and rejection to heart and grow a pair. Success is not static, it is dynamic.

   YC has more success than you.

Yes and no. They had a number of exits, but most of their startups didn't get anywhere. The thing is that investors are more or less shooting in the dark. Sure some might have a slightly better success ratio, but even the top investors pass on sure things all the time

Re: YC is Wrong About You

#22

Post by 10ren » Tue, Apr 07, 2009, 3:50 PM UTC

edw519 wrote: post #15

nostrademons wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Four YC rejections, however, is pretty rough.

Walt Disney got a yes from the 996th bank he approached. I'm such a pussy that I would have quit after 950 attempts. He never quit. That's the point. I expect that you won't either.

Cool story, have you a citation?

Re: YC is Wrong About You

#23

Post by noamsml » Tue, Apr 07, 2009, 4:13 PM UTC

fiaz wrote: post #17

No they are not. YC has more experience than you. YC has more success than you. If they turned you down, listen to the "why" and make the adjustments necessary to be successful. Consider it a badge of honor that they even gave you the time of day. Take the information, feedback, advice, and rejection to heart and grow a pair. Success is not static, it is dynamic.

Yes and no. YC has more success than you but that doesn't mean that they're right about you. Your job is never to take the advice of an authority figure simply because they are an authority figure. People who work like that never succeed.

Re: YC is Wrong About You

#24

Post by mahmud » Tue, Apr 07, 2009, 10:35 PM UTC

froo wrote: post #14

david927 wrote: post #11

I'd like to add a couple things to this: 1. This is the 'gatekeeper' problem. You have a handful of people deciding if you're making "what people want". They can't possibly know what all people want. JK Rowling got rejected by, what, 20 publishers? They can't know. They can only do their best. The 'gatekeeper' problem also means you get idiosyncrasies, such as (essentially) a ban on single founders, etc. 2. Some idea…

(Ok, but I will say there's a clear correlation between mediocre ideas and ease of pitch.) yeah, "index all of the world's information" is such a mediocre idea, even though it is a very easy pitch, those Google guys will never make any money.

I upvoted you but I disagree wholeheartedly with your google invocation: No, Larry and Sergey never expected their startup to become what it is today. Your small-step success feeds into your ambition; it's one they nailed search that they have started to visualize bigger and bigger success, then execute it.

Re: YC is Wrong About You

#25

Post by froo » Wed, Apr 08, 2009, 1:06 AM UTC

mahmud wrote: post #24

froo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Ok, but I will say there's a clear correlation between mediocre ideas and ease of pitch.) yeah, "index all of the world's information" is such a mediocre idea, even though it is a very easy pitch, those Google guys will never make any money.

I upvoted you but I disagree wholeheartedly with your google invocation: No, Larry and Sergey never expected their startup to become what it is today. Your small-step success feeds into your ambition; it's one they nailed search that they have started to visualize bigger and bigger success, then execute it.

and yet just because they nailed it - still doesn't mean it was a bad idea...

There are plenty of bad ideas that are executed well and don't succeed. There are plenty of good ideas that are executed poorly and succeed anyway.

The point isn't how they executed, it really was a reflection on the david927's assertion that there is a correlation between ease of pitch and how good an idea is, is wrong, plain and simple.

"our site is like facebook meets digg" is an easy pitch (I've actually heard this from someone), and in my humble opinion, is a bad idea

"we want to index all of the world's information" is an easy pitch, and so happens to be a good idea.

Re: YC is Wrong About You

#26

Post by david927 » Wed, Apr 08, 2009, 10:53 AM UTC

froo wrote: post #25

mahmud wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I upvoted you but I disagree wholeheartedly with your google invocation: No, Larry and Sergey never expected their startup to become what it is today. Your small-step success feeds into your ambition; it's one they nailed search that they have started to visualize bigger and bigger success, then execute it.

and yet just because they nailed it - still doesn't mean it was a bad idea... There are plenty of bad ideas that are executed well and don't succeed. There are plenty of good ideas that are executed poorly and succeed anyway. The point isn't how they executed, it really was a reflection on the david927's assertion that there is a correlation between ease of pitch and how good an idea is, is wrong, plain and simple. "…

You all got it wrong. Here's what I said:

- There is no correlation between a good idea and how hard or easy it is to pitch. Some great ideas are easy to pitch, others are not. No correlation.

- There is a direct correlation between a mediocre idea and ease in pitching it. Every mediocre idea is easy to pitch.