Not getting picked should not necessarily reflect poorly on you... But if you try much harder you will just show that they were correct to avoid you. You do have spirit though, so do something useful with it instead of ranting about not being picked at the dance.
Dear Y Combinator, we bet you we can solve a problem of yours in 72 hours.
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Re: Dear Y Combinator, we bet you we can solve a problem of yours in 72 hours.
#72Life skill for you: putting a message into a bottle and then flinging it onto the Internet could get it read, but that isn't the way to bet. Here's a hypothetical for you: how many people do you think have social permission to contact a YC partner and say "X is awesome and deserves a look." I'd ballpark that in the hundreds to low thousand range. Many of them are accessible on the Internets and less overwhelmed with…
http://b.qr.ae/Hktlyv
This explains our dilemma. Frankly, we are a bunch of "nobodies" in the middle of Iowa. We don't know any Y Combinator Alums, and even if we were to reach out the best we could hope for is a lukewarm they seemed "nice". We have a lot of drive and are trying to prove ourselves any way possible. That's what we're trying to do with this post.
Re: Dear Y Combinator, we bet you we can solve a problem of yours in 72 hours.
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
The flipside is that there are a surprising number of organizations with lots of money that haven't figured out a better way of distributing it, so applications can still be a good way of getting funds. One of my acquaintances, for example, just got $100k in seed funding (with no equity in return) entirely based on a 15-page application sent to a funding body, having had no previous contact with the funder.
Having painstakingly gone through the process of writing 35 page Grant Proposals for a hospital and getting funding from the government on all three occasions, I can assure you that the application process was just a formality and legal requirement. The funding came through because the grantor had a relationship with the department heads that received the funds. Obviously, you need to meet the required criteria, and…
I've also done that several times; it really depends on the funder. In a surprising number of cases, the funder has wound up with a pile of money and not enough contacts with relevant people, so they really do choose people out of the applicant pool. It can also vary by country. In Europe, for example, how much relationships matter seems to vary north-to-south. In southern Europe it is pretty much 100% about relationships.
Perhaps in reaction to what's perceived as southern-European corruption, in Scandinavia there is substantial pressure on funders to make their decisions based on the official application process. There's a worry that "contacts" means your old grad-school buddy, someone you know from a sports club or weekly board-game get-together, etc., as opposed to scientific merit. There's also (what seems to me, as a foreigner) a strong worry that the process shouldn't be perceived as a sham, which means that at least some proportion of the funds have to be doled out according to the official application route, to prove to everyone that the system works like it says it does. In practice that ethos is upheld at some places more than others, of course, but in some circumstances you really can just apply and get money.
Re: Dear Y Combinator, we bet you we can solve a problem of yours in 72 hours.
#74I will be surprised if YC even has any pain points that are well enough understood to be concisely communicated to an external source and can be solved in 72 hours. Usually the reason you have a pain point is either that you don't understand the underlying problem yet, or the solving it will take time. But I suppose that just means any pain points YC may be able to convey are things where these guys are expected to fail, which I guess is the whole spirit of the challenge.
Re: Dear Y Combinator, we bet you we can solve a problem of yours in 72 hours.
#75Rather than naysay your efforts, I prefer to support. pg has opened up YC to people without ideas, so contrary to other comments here, I don't think you're violating the spirit of YC to request an interview without an idea. But your open-ended way of asking might give pg too much to think about. So that could be a reason why he hasn't got back to you yet.
One idea: pg wants to invest in more entrepreneurs who don't have ideas yet, and in some cases, perhaps even people without much history of success on paper. Applicants like yourselves need ideas to build. Create a system that makes it easy for YC's problems to be discovered by applicants, so applicants can use these problems as product ideas. Another tip: think beyond YC's problems to the problems of YC companies. The problems of YC companies are also YC's problems.
Another idea. I read that YC has trouble scaling their demo days each year. One article quoted a guy saying that the growing lunch line is actually one of Demo Day's bigger problems. Make YC Demo Day food service better for guests. Or instead, make it easier for YC to coordinate. I'm sure pg doesn't like thinking about it.
Re: Dear Y Combinator, we bet you we can solve a problem of yours in 72 hours.
#76I've got a problem for you to solve. This is not a complete sentence. Solve that. ;) In the spirit of showing you that we can thrive at Y Combinator, and that we are more than who we are on paper.
Awesome, free grammar advice from someone who writes: "I have got a problem" Thanks for the LOLz...
I've got something for you to read. http://bit.ly/HcYIJS
Edit: Also, while I stand by the correctness of my first statement, me being right or wrong wouldn't make that fragmented sentence a complete one. However, unlike the OP, my comment was not intended to catch the attention of Y Combinator to get an interview with the hopes of getting my start-up kick started. So I would tend to give posts like mine a little more leeway than a challenge like the OP. Perhaps grammatical errors like that resulted in the rejections.
Re: Dear Y Combinator, we bet you we can solve a problem of yours in 72 hours.
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
> applications (in general) are a backup filtering mechanism for people who haven't figured out a more effective way to get what they want yet. It blows me away how many people don't get this.
The flipside is that there are a surprising number of organizations with lots of money that haven't figured out a better way of distributing it, so applications can still be a good way of getting funds. One of my acquaintances, for example, just got $100k in seed funding (with no equity in return) entirely based on a 15-page application sent to a funding body, having had no previous contact with the funder.
Not sure what you guys mean.
For example, I don't think of YC as a way of getting funding, but as a way of getting things done well, thank to the possibly unbeatable amount of white board advice from so many good people that it's very hard to get otherwise.
You can have a great idea, have a great team and even have good money, but you could still make a mistake in choosing one of the key strategies of your product.
I, for example, think that YC is perfect at trying to avoid making this kind of mistakes and helping you make your idea stronger.
Re: Dear Y Combinator, we bet you we can solve a problem of yours in 72 hours.
#78I love the creativity, though I have to admit, I'm a little confused. YC already does a great job of releasing great startup ideas (see links below in the off chance that you haven't read them already). And it seems like everyone I met who got in was accepted because of the awesome things they created. So if you're short on ideas, read the lists, and then get to work and have something to show for it by application t…
Good point. If you wanna show you're capable of executing, just pick one of the well known pain points. Build something cool. Then use that as a proof of your abilities. Investors look for good teams. There's no better curriculum for your team than a track record of great projects.
Instead of telling us that you can build something, just build something. :)
Re: Dear Y Combinator, we bet you we can solve a problem of yours in 72 hours.
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
> applications (in general) are a backup filtering mechanism for people who haven't figured out a more effective way to get what they want yet. It blows me away how many people don't get this.
The flipside is that there are a surprising number of organizations with lots of money that haven't figured out a better way of distributing it, so applications can still be a good way of getting funds. One of my acquaintances, for example, just got $100k in seed funding (with no equity in return) entirely based on a 15-page application sent to a funding body, having had no previous contact with the funder.
Dear lord, I'd love to know who this funder is.
Re: Dear Y Combinator, we bet you we can solve a problem of yours in 72 hours.
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, I don't know. Having a team that can solve any arbitrary difficult problem in three days could be quite useful in a startup. The (technical) execution of a startup idea can be cast as a series of arbitrarily difficult problems, after all.
Arbitrary huh... My two long term pet peeves for which I would be most happy to help lobby to get them a hearing: 1) Faster than light travel 2) Create a robot that carries it's own power supply, communication device, and webcams that would allow me to traipse up and down any path in Rocky Mountain National Park in real time so that I can take a hike for 20 minutes when I need a break without the requisite plane trav…
Well, I'd settle for a teleportation device or ability that could take me anywhere in the universe instantaneously, and far, far greater physical durability (maybe in a Culture-level gel suit).
They better get cranking, because 72 hours is just not a lot of time to develop either of these things.