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Tell HN: YC W16 rejection emails are out

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Tell HN: YC W16 rejection emails are out

#31

Post by taytus »

montbonnot wrote: post #27
taytus wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YC is arguably the best accelerator in the world. Maybe you don't need an accelerator at all, for those who are interested, applying to YC is definitively worth it.

Do you need to be "accelerated" when you already have all of the above? It could be a lazy way to move forward. Which costs you %7 of the company. I believe you can do it yourself if you made it that far already.

Yes. "Some active users" needs to be millions (unless you are b2b) We have access to 400k candidates, a real product, and real clients (Pizza Hut, 7-Eleven, just to name some) and we got rejected.

Edit: and I'm OK with it, we just need to work harder. We do not depend of YC to be successful, but I see all the advantages of being part of the YC club.

Re: Tell HN: YC W16 rejection emails are out

#32

Post by dilipmalave »

Rejected and dejected. Our first application. The process was helpful though, so no regrets. Will apply for the next batch, of-course.

But back to work now. Focus is getting the goddamn MVP done and get some real users.

Does this mean, people who haven't received rejection letters, they in all likelihood get invited for the interview? Anyone invited yet?

Re: Tell HN: YC W16 rejection emails are out

#33

Post by feedbackw16 »

The Feedback Offer

(I'm not affiliated with YC.)

I would like to try an experiment if I may.

For $40 I will give feedback to any startup that got a YC response email tonight. This applies for startups that got rejected and startups that got invited.

This could be feedback on the main idea, the YC application, beta testing your demo or website, help with writing, or anything else that would help. I expect to spend 30 minutes for every application received.

If at any time you feel my feedback isn't helping, I will refund the full amount. If I don't find time to review your startup, I will also refund the full amount.

I'm doing this partly as an experiment: this could be a startup idea. I want to see if it's possible to earn money giving feedback. I'm also doing it as personal training. I'm not an expert on startups. The more sites and ideas I'm exposed to, the better I can get at finding holes in my work. Charging will likely make you and me more committed to the review.

I want to stay anonymous. I want to see how feasible it is to interpret feedback without knowing who the person giving the feedback is. I believe the way to tell if the feedback you are getting is useful is to pay attention to the explanation you get with it.

Although I can't promise to respond to everyone I will do the best I can to respond to as many people as possible before the November 9th invitation day for YC.

I promise not to share information about your startup.

The email to reach me is in my profile. I'd welcome feedback too on improving the process of giving feedback. Thanks.

Re: Tell HN: YC W16 rejection emails are out

#34

Post by pavornyoh »

feedbackw16 wrote: post #33

The Feedback Offer (I'm not affiliated with YC.) I would like to try an experiment if I may. For $40 I will give feedback to any startup that got a YC response email tonight. This applies for startups that got rejected and startups that got invited. This could be feedback on the main idea, the YC application, beta testing your demo or website, help with writing, or anything else that would help. I expect to spend 30…

>If at any time you feel my feedback isn't helping, I will refund the full amount. If I don't find time to review your startup, I will also refund the full amount. I'm not an expert on startups. The more sites and ideas I'm exposed to, the better I can get at finding holes in my work. Charging will likely make you and me more committed to the review.

A bit self serving.. Isn't it? How about you do it for them for free in the beginning and if they think the advice is very good, then they pay you $40 instead of what you are proposing?

If you are looking to do an experiment, rejected people that are down and vulnerable are not the people for your little experiment.

Re: Tell HN: YC W16 rejection emails are out

#35

Post by bobsgame »

Impossible wrote: post #24
bobsgame wrote: post #3

Rejected again. Not much of a surprise since I'm not a good fit- I don't even really consider myself a startup but it never hurts to try... Speaking of which, anyone want to throw some cash at a 10 year game development project by one obsessed starving artist?

Whoa, I had no idea Bobs game was still around. I figured you had shipped it or abandoned it a long time ago. Y-Combinator is a bad fit for most indie games with a few exceptions, simply because unless you're Minecraft, even if you are very successful you won't have a billion+ dollar exit. Because there are tens or hundreds of thousands of indie games and only one Minecraft the odds aren't very good for investors. If…

Yeah, I was applying for a separate but closely related idea, trying to do a unique dedicated Android handheld.

Re: Tell HN: YC W16 rejection emails are out

#36

Post by big_fish »

pavornyoh wrote: post #34
feedbackw16 wrote: post #33

The Feedback Offer (I'm not affiliated with YC.) I would like to try an experiment if I may. For $40 I will give feedback to any startup that got a YC response email tonight. This applies for startups that got rejected and startups that got invited. This could be feedback on the main idea, the YC application, beta testing your demo or website, help with writing, or anything else that would help. I expect to spend 30…

>If at any time you feel my feedback isn't helping, I will refund the full amount. If I don't find time to review your startup, I will also refund the full amount. I'm not an expert on startups. The more sites and ideas I'm exposed to, the better I can get at finding holes in my work. Charging will likely make you and me more committed to the review. A bit self serving.. Isn't it? How about you do it for them for fre…

agreed +1

Re: Tell HN: YC W16 rejection emails are out

#37

Post by eman2611 »

I was rejected after getting and responding to a follow up question during the application review period. I did some research and discovered that such follow up questions demonstrate that YC is strongly considering your application. That's as good as an in for me! :).

I honestly didn't think I was ready for YC cause I'm a solo founder and unnaturally focused on upcoming pilot deployments to the detriment of almost everything else. If curious, we're building http://www.smartersocket.com (rebranding as https://www.BeaconGrid.com in like 2 days.)

Re: Tell HN: YC W16 rejection emails are out

#38

Post by elainelu »

Got rejected. Very much hope to find out why as we have got seed round, two co-founders from top tier tech/startup companies, an efficient and well-collaborate team, and have a Beta product running. So, I guess it's the business idea issue? It's probably a competitive market but we are confident to make difference and our initial campaign showed encouraging result. With all above, we still didn't get a chance for interview. I don't want to be overoptimistic. We will continue working toward our roadmap but meanwhile I sincerely hope to hear from YC about why, as that will be really helpful to us. Please.
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