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Tell HN: YC rejection emails have started going out

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Re: Tell HN: YC rejection emails have started going out

#61

Post by boringkyle »

jmduke wrote: post #52
strukturedkaos wrote: post #30

We, Body Boss ( http://bodybossfitness.com ) didn't even have a product last time year, and we thought just having a good idea was enough for acceptance. In the past year, we've boostrapped like crazy, built a product, launched and acquired plenty of customers to validate our idea. YC rejection for the 2nd year in a row has done little to dampen our spirits and ambition. Here's to another rejection that motivates us…

Just wanted to say that I'm nowhere near your target market but the landing page looks excellent , incredibly polished for less than a year's work. Best of luck to you!

I agree, impressive landing page. Every application round I see someone as polished as this, and then realize to not take rejection to heart. Rejections, even at YC, will have their fair share of false positives.

Re: Tell HN: YC rejection emails have started going out

#63

Post by borski »

We've offered this before, and are doing so again, because startups are hard and a YC rejection is but one roadblock you will face (among many).

So, Tinfoil Security is offering our $59 Basic plan free for life, and 50% off all other plans. Happy to keep startups secure :) Email your YC rejection letter to founders@tinfoilsecurity.com and we'll hook you up.

Re: Tell HN: YC rejection emails have started going out

#65

Post by strukturedkaos »

jmduke wrote: post #52
strukturedkaos wrote: post #30

We, Body Boss ( http://bodybossfitness.com ) didn't even have a product last time year, and we thought just having a good idea was enough for acceptance. In the past year, we've boostrapped like crazy, built a product, launched and acquired plenty of customers to validate our idea. YC rejection for the 2nd year in a row has done little to dampen our spirits and ambition. Here's to another rejection that motivates us…

Just wanted to say that I'm nowhere near your target market but the landing page looks excellent , incredibly polished for less than a year's work. Best of luck to you!

Thank you! It's too bad that you aren't in our target market. :-)

Our progress so far is a huge testament to the skill, execution and resolve of our team (http://bodybossfitness.com/about).

Re: Tell HN: YC rejection emails have started going out

#66

Post by tomasien »

It's going to get harder and harder to get into YC (as has been the trend) which means getting rejected is going to mean less and less. It used to be an "oh we make mistakes, but mostly we find the right founders" and now it's "we find a lot of great founders, but we miss several successful ones each batch."

Don't think it means nothing, it means something about where you are in your life as a founder and how well you can communicate that (and that matters), but not anything more than that.

- 5x rejectee and pretty successful dude

Re: Tell HN: YC rejection emails have started going out

#67

Post by larrys »

strukturedkaos wrote: post #65
jmduke wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wanted to say that I'm nowhere near your target market but the landing page looks excellent , incredibly polished for less than a year's work. Best of luck to you!

Thank you! It's too bad that you aren't in our target market. :-) Our progress so far is a huge testament to the skill, execution and resolve of our team ( http://bodybossfitness.com/about ).

Your site looks nice.

But one thing. Your target market is "coaches and players"

Yet your "about" page is targeted toward either a) getting funded or b) people who are into tech, read HN, etc.

That's a problem. You start of with "Andrew Reifman" who is a "pixel perfectionist". This has nothing to do with anything that your target market (say the coach at my local high school team) would even remotely care about.

The one person "Darren Pottinger" who has some street cred is listed as number two.

I think Darren should be the prominent person on that "about" page with the rest of the team deprecated (smaller type) or even placed on a separate page. Perhaps get some "advisors" that are coaches, players or other users to fill space on that page as well. Give it some meat.

That page to me says "we are looking to build a company" not "we have the expertise to help players and coaches with our product".

If someone wants to invest - your team will matter. But it shouldn't be presented in a way that detracts from the product or service you are offering.

Re: Tell HN: YC rejection emails have started going out

#69

Post by andyjsong »

DanielRibeiro wrote: post #40

I'm just hoping to give a few people some perpective on such rejections: - Damien Katz (creator of CouchDB) was also rejected[1]. He went on and got $2 million from Redpoint Ventures [2] - On this video[3], Jessica Livingston interviews Drew. It shows that he was also rejected the first time he tried out YC. - The oscar of rejected but finally accepted: I got into YC after applying six times [4] - Peteris Krumins als…

Interviewstreet was rejected twice before applying the third time to get an email asking them to come in for a 10 min interview.

Re: Tell HN: YC rejection emails have started going out

#70

Post by boringkyle »

liddybird wrote: post #16

www.getjuniper.com just got rejected! We definitely have better luck with getting ladies to like us than getting PG to like us. ;)

Love that you have a functional page and not another one of the launchrock sites I had to click through.

One alumni told me that YC was all about picking billion dollar, not million dollar businesses. In that case, could you say juniper would scale to the billion dollar market? Could your users track their usage with a recurring Google calendar entry? (I know women that do). Why not scale to include other high usage products - toothpaste, toilet paper, etc? (I know of one startup in stealth mode doing this, so it's probably a feasible plan). Sorry for playing devil's advocate - really like what you got so far though.

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