Not me... I got my rejection email yesterday. I thought I'd be more disappointed at getting turned down, but I'm not. It's actually motivated me to step out on my own.
One of the big reasons that YC exists is to mentor young entrepreneurs. I would love to have a mentor, but I think that I"m going to branch out on my own to find them, instead of drowning in the crowd at Start-up school to exchange three words with Jessica or Paul. Instead, I've been considering volunteering at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View to hang out with some elder geeks. The Computer History Museum has a bunch of volunteer hardware/software hackers who restore vintage main-frames. These are all really smart hackers who have spent decades in the tech business, and they are spending time in retirement doing geek stuff, because they love it. These are the kind of people that I want to spend time with.
My team and I just moved to Silicon Valley this past year, and we're setting up out entire lives around the idea of having a series of start-ups. We've driven a combined total of 12 thousand miles to get here. We're set up financially so we can afford to iterate through start-up ideas without breaking the bank. We have a great space to work in, and we're meeting a lot of cool people. I actually talked with a man a few weeks ago who knew William Shockley of Shockley Semiconductor fame.
Yeah, It's been a hard road just to get to Silicon Valley. I'm sad that I didn't get in to the startup school. But, I'm sure that I'm going to get a lot more rejections throughout my career as an entrepreneur. If I wanted something easy, I'd choose a different career. I'm doing this because I enjoy the challenge. I'm doing this because I love technology. I'm doing this because I love the game, and I'm in it for the long haul.