YC Summer 2017 Invites/Rejections

I totally get rejection, I've been rejected for all sorts of things, but normally for rejection I can understand on some level why.

This I don't get. Not only are we applying with a company that fits with an RFS, not only is our team really solid, not only is concept proven, but we have a possibility to do real social good that both makes money and helps people.

Even in talking to other people, the reaction was either "why are you even doing YC" or "Sheesh I'm embarassed to by applying next to you". I know that sounds really arrogant, and Im sorry for sounding like that. I'm just...confused, I guess? I really wish that the applications came with a reason why they were rejected, even if it was one sentence.

I can't honestly believe that typing a one sentence "rejection for reason" would take that much extra time. Even a drop down of "we rejected you for this one of the following 5 canned reasons" (your team was bad, your idea was bad, you have no revenue, etc.) would be helpful.

Is it because my cofounder is from another country? Or because we don't live in the bay area?

I seriously do not understand this. I know that sounds a little bit whiney, but it's just frustrating to have put this much emotional investment into something[1] and to get rejected for it without even a brief explanation of why.

[1]: For people that don't live in the bay, applying to this program is a big deal. I skipped out on events next week because we might have to block out time for an interview, I moved things around this week specifically so that I could schedule an interview if possible, I moved things around this summer so that if I needed to be in SF I could etc.

I get not counting your chickens and all of that, I don't think we did. Nothing is lost for us here, and moving events and things around isn't a big deal, obviously that is just part of doing business. It is just frustrating to get a rejection email that doesn't even include a few seconds explaining why.

Forever onward, obviously. It just really sucks not having feedback on why you were rejected.

- Here are the X Partners we have available as resources

- Who do these X Partners Like and who can they Work With

- How would this Team fit into our YC ecosystem, recognizing that a lot of the slots in some verticals are filled.

It's a multidimensional optimization, they're not just going for rawr, they're going for "fit", too, and perhaps all of the qualities you list as reasons for your surprise at the rejection, are only part of the equation.

It's the pragmatics of organizations. The system doesn't just choose the "best parts", it chooses the best of the parts that "fit the best". Paradoxically, as the system increases in size, the "open slots" become more constrained, the "fit" becomes more overdefined by the existing parts, and the likelihood of choosing based on "rawr bestness" is decreased.

Take heart, Fellow Rejectee!

www.mountwish.org

Problem and solution:

Most companies struggle with the high complexity and ever-increasing regulatory burdens associated with managing their FX, commodity price and interest rate risks. Not to mention that costs in financial risk management are rising fast (currently firms spend on average around 2.86% of their revenues on hedging these risk). Hence, they usually would prefer to have a simple, straight-forward insurance covering these risks rather than having to deal with derivatives and the related administrative requirements. That’s where we come in with our product called FinGuard, which is an ERP system plugin doing exactly this – measuring the exposure and automatically insuring it at a cost which is at least 40% cheaper compared to traditional hedging methods (as we can effectively match contrary risk positions of different customers).

Top three customer advantages:

1. Significant EBITDA boost

Savings coming from our cross-customer hedging approach can increase EBITDA by up to 11.5% p.a. which is equal to an increase of 16% in sales, while additionally saving any kind of fixed treasury expenses (e.g. treasury systems, staffing, research data, special admin processes and legal services,…). Hence customers’ EBITDA will go up sharply.

2. No compliance hassles anymore

It reduces compliance burdens , just think of KYC checks, MiFID II, EMIR and the likes, which for an insurance policy from a customer’s perspective are no longer applicable

3. Convenience and more time for your core business

Increased focus on your core business with automation taking all the financial risk management hassles (e.g. going global w/o worrying about FX rates) and potential human errors (e.g. no litigations with banks about the agreed on derivatives pricing) out while using big data to improve results further

Status Quo and Key metrics:

- A solid team is in place and shall be hired with the next funding round (or accelerator money), but until then it's just me working full-time on the project (by the way I don' understand the bias against solo founders anyway: https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/26/co-founders-optional/)

- Validated concept (based on historical data), business processes defined, thorough business plan written (100+ pages) and software design sketch ready; first prototype shall work by end of April

- Currently discussing cooperation with other financial services providers as they can help us to drive sales significantly (attracted leading players including bulge bracket banks and household names in the insurance industry among others)

- 300+ sales leads each with more than 100m in revenues (our own pricing is derived as a percentage of their revenues); currently reaching out to them to get signed LoIs

- 2.97tn USD total market size; expecting USD 546m in pre-payments in year 1

- positive VC feedback in general