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Our five failed YC applications and one successful one

relate.so

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Re: Our five failed YC applications and one successful one

#51

Post by leonidasv »

Congratulations!

I would like to make a suggestion, if you that's possible... Your landing page has way too much text. There's the copy from the landing page + the text on screenshots. I found it overwhelming and could not really grasp the benefits of your product. If possible, please consider changing the real screenshots to mockups where the text is not real text but placeholder bars (except for action buttons/text that's necessary to show functionality you're featuring).

Wish you guys the best.

Re: Our five failed YC applications and one successful one

#52

Post by youssefabdelm »

stickfigure wrote: post #9
jitl wrote: post #3

I work at Notion. I advise you to avoid the .so TLD - there’s a lot of institutional bias against Somalia’s TLD, like blanket blocks in many corporate firewalls. This problem will be worse if you serve public user-generated content from that TLD because the chain of communication from you to SomaliNIC might have a bunch of unknown third party intermediaries where an abuse report can get lost. Today Notion is large &…

I would avoid all of the two-letter domain names. I suffered 8 hours of excruciating downtime back in 2012 when the .st nic went down: https://github.com/stickfigure/blog/wiki/Beware-cutesy-two-l... I learned my lesson, I'll take the .com every time, even if I have to get creative with the name.

What about longer ones like .voyage? Do you know if they suffer from the same issues?

Re: Our five failed YC applications and one successful one

#53

Post by CoffeeOnWrite »

pavon wrote: post #42
jitl wrote: post #3

I work at Notion. I advise you to avoid the .so TLD - there’s a lot of institutional bias against Somalia’s TLD, like blanket blocks in many corporate firewalls. This problem will be worse if you serve public user-generated content from that TLD because the chain of communication from you to SomaliNIC might have a bunch of unknown third party intermediaries where an abuse report can get lost. Today Notion is large &…

What is the secondary meaning that causes people to choose the .so domain? I get .tv, .ai and finishing the spelling of a word using a ccTLD, but I never understood why people where using so (other than local businesses). Whenever I see them my general impression is one of (a) I'm not hip enough to get this reference, mixed with (b) that company was so desperate to find a good domain name they resorted to registering…

I’m curious the answer to this too.

I always think of .so shared object files, which is a cool nerdy association.. but that can’t be it right?

Re: Our five failed YC applications and one successful one

#54

Post by selcuka »

pavon wrote: post #42
jitl wrote: post #3

I work at Notion. I advise you to avoid the .so TLD - there’s a lot of institutional bias against Somalia’s TLD, like blanket blocks in many corporate firewalls. This problem will be worse if you serve public user-generated content from that TLD because the chain of communication from you to SomaliNIC might have a bunch of unknown third party intermediaries where an abuse report can get lost. Today Notion is large &…

What is the secondary meaning that causes people to choose the .so domain? I get .tv, .ai and finishing the spelling of a word using a ccTLD, but I never understood why people where using so (other than local businesses). Whenever I see them my general impression is one of (a) I'm not hip enough to get this reference, mixed with (b) that company was so desperate to find a good domain name they resorted to registering…

It looks like there is no special meaning, at least not for Notion [1]:

> We chose .so when we were starting out (lots of other companies named Notion, and .so was available).

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/Notion/comments/f6x9mk/why_the_so_d...

Re: Our five failed YC applications and one successful one

#55

Post by [deleted] »

shagie wrote: post #15
soheil wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the .so TLD. If enough people keep using it I don't see how that would still make people nervous. It's a nice sounding TLD and if people have a problem with Somalia they shouldn't take it out on an innocent suffix.

The question is "what control can the government of Somalia have on names that are registered under its TLD?" Can it seize the name? In 2010, it was regulated by the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. In 2015 it was a different government and managed by Somali Network Information Center. In 2018 it was transferred to The National Communications Authority. Will the policies change? If the country cuts ties with…

[deleted]

Re: Our five failed YC applications and one successful one

#56

Post by As_You_Wish »

bentlegen wrote: post #39
andrewguenther wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of it is that the incentives have changed. A lot of people don't see Google as "I've made it" they see it as "great, I can work anywhere I want after this." I think we're starting to see that in YC as well: "I'm in the YC network now." It isn't about the business you get in with, it's that you, as a founder, are now part of the YC network and the opportunities that opens for you as an individual rather t…

I think one of the brilliant things YC (and PG) have done is propagate “being a founder” as occupying an elite career/employment category beyond anything else. Like, there’s an under appreciated level of category building that YC is responsible for (and the success of their founders hasn’t hurt).

I don't understand this. Anyone can "be a founder." All you have to do is go down to the Department of Finance, file for a business and fictitious business name, and voila, you're a founder.

Or, does "founder" mean something different? Does it mean that you start a company AND bring a company to $100 million revenue minimum or something? If that's the case, that's kinda weird to me, but ok boomers, er, sorry, millenials. But, if it means that anyone is a founder by signing a piece of paper and paying $25 at the county office, then color me unimpressed.

So can anyone enlighten me about what the specific definition of a founder is? Is it something different, some other nuance or definition? I don't know, I'm confused. Someone, help a brother out.

Re: Our five failed YC applications and one successful one

#57

Post by mdorazio »

andrewguenther wrote: post #28

This story just really doesn't read like the triumph of will it was meant to be... My takeaway from this is that the founders wanted to get into YC. The business doesn't matter, they just wanted to be in YC. The business morphed around what they thought would get into YC, not what would actually make a good business. I have a ton of respect for YCombinator, but they are not all knowing oracles who get it right 100% o…

Exactly my thought on this as well. This line was particularly telling:

> But for the past three years, we've struggled to find the right problem to solve and gain even a small traction.

So why was this time (another CRM) the right problem? Is the team actually leveraging industry experience and unique skills in this new pivot? Looks like no, they just found the combination that YC likes. And this:

> If your users don’t pay for your B2B product, you don’t have a product –– yet.

Do you really need YC judges to tell you this? Reading Lean Startup and maybe The Mom Test should be basically mandatory for would-be founders at this point, right?

Regardless, good writeup here with some helpful advice to younger founders who want to know what YC actually values in its judging criteria for batches.

Re: Our five failed YC applications and one successful one

#58

Post by kylecordes »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #48
jitl wrote: post #3

I work at Notion. I advise you to avoid the .so TLD - there’s a lot of institutional bias against Somalia’s TLD, like blanket blocks in many corporate firewalls. This problem will be worse if you serve public user-generated content from that TLD because the chain of communication from you to SomaliNIC might have a bunch of unknown third party intermediaries where an abuse report can get lost. Today Notion is large &…

Why does Notion use .so? It looks and sounds unprofessional to me.

It was probably the first TLD they found where their company name was available.

Re: Our five failed YC applications and one successful one

#59

Post by kylecordes »

IncRnd wrote: post #13

Congratualtions on your temerity! I looked at relate.so, and I already use a CRM that does everything listed on your website. What are the new features that relate provides compared to other CRMs?

Looking at our industry as a whole, it appears that making yet another of some proven good, profitable, popular category is a pretty decent strategy.

(I too am inclined, when someone is making a new thing, to wonder… But a quick search finds 10 existing things that appear to do a pretty great job of everything you are thinking of, why would someone not use one of them? Why make the new, similar thing? I think being able to suppress this thought might be helpful to startup success.)

Re: Our five failed YC applications and one successful one

#60

Post by vadym909 »

version_five wrote: post #23

Congratulations! I've been thinking about this a bit, even for a company as renowned as YC, I don't like how the power balance is, and the sort of "we made it!" vibe as if you finally impressed some diety enough to grace you with good fortune. I see the same kind of posts (oddly) about people who tried n times to get a job at google and finally they "made it". Like what are we doing? I think that once an institution…

Unfortunately, It's a human weakness to look for 'formulaic' answers to solve for life's most difficult problems. If successful people came from Ivy Leagues, it became de rigueur that getting into an Ivy League sets you up for success. Then it was Big 4 Consulting, then it was working for FANGs, now it is Founder at a YC company.

Not saying that YC is bad, but it would be nice if getting in was easier. Maybe they should make half their seats competitive and the other half as paid ($500K) just like private schools do. Then leave it up to people's imagination how someone got in. Or maybe they should just let everyone in.

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