Personally, this post is the first one I have ever wanted to down-vote and wish I had that ability. If someone is pouring their ambition, time, and resources into a product, who are you to judge their desire to get feedback from fellow HN readers and/or applicants? If you do not want to read about their HN application success or rejection, do not read it. Lots of stories are submitted and posted on this site. If not interesting to you specifically, move on.
I build my product in 2006. I didn't get into YC in 2007. My company became ramen profitable a year ago. Then I found a co-founder.
I broke just about every rule of thumb that typically applies to startups, and my company took a while to get off the ground as a result, but we are cash flow positive, 100% founder owned and growing like gangbusters.
YC is not the only way to go, and most of the "rules for startups" can be broken. If you want to start a business and have a decent shot at building a substantial amount of wealth, there are plenty of other less-glamorous, less-publicized, less-competitive ways to do it.
Thanks for the encouragement! I've been meaning to write more about it, just been too busy. I'll try to get it done next week, now that I know there is an audience :)
Good job. There are so many "lessons I learned..." from YC companies. And almost all of them are just repeating what PG said in his essays. Most of the 'lessons' are becoming cliche now. I will love to read on your startup story. You should write a post about it
I get the impression that the micro-decisions that people obsess about and make top 10 lists out of are usually far less important than the quality of the founders.
Wisdom of the crowds isn't infallible, and YC acceptance/rejection is certainly a likely place where it might fail.
Erlang day getting taken too far is a great example of this type of failure happening in the past.
EDIT: That being said, I definitely think it's possible to do feedback on YC rejections in a positive way. I'd just like to be careful about a mob getting triggered regarding rejections.
Please do write a motivational or demotivational post about how you didn't get into YC. I think every cycle it's useful to hear people's impressions, thoughts, and experiences and feel a sense that it's not just you who runs into brick walls sometimes.
I think it's a great thing to see how encouraging the community is in these cases--- your post might just inspire someone else to go after their life dreams even without help from the "establishment".
It'd be easier and less annoying if there were fewer of them at a time on the front page, though. What if YC required a postmortem written interview/reflection (got in or not) and then stickied the term's index page of them on HN when it came out? Less, but at the same time more.
Practice a little bit of patience? Most things drop off the HN front page soon enough. At least those stories will be about startups. There have been worse trends on HN before.
I have already read a lot of people (who were accepted) sharing their experienced, but never those who weren't. I think mistakes are a more valuable thing (obviously carefully explained).
Playing devil's advocate here, and I thought this was a good point from the thread last year:
I am all for preserving HN's sanctity, and I agree with and appreciate most of the points you make. But your tone makes the whole thing sound almost exclusively like "losers, please keep your rejection sob stories away from HN". I wonder how rejected applicants will take your well-meant advice.
Rejection has a human angle, and refusing to acknowledge that people respond to it in (seemingly) irrational ways doesn't help those who need encouragement, validation, or just knowledge of the fact that they are not alone. How is asking other hackers 'which web framework to use?' any 'better' than asking other YC applicants rejection related questions, given that this is effectively the only public YC forum? - anuraggoel
I agree that the examples you've got there wouldn't be very valuable. But I think that hearing about the process from a rejected applicant standpoint might be useful to people who want to apply in the future, and this might dissuade someone from posting something like that.
Is it so difficult for you to just ignore the posts that you personally don't want to see? I'd rather see every single one of those posts than this post that you have just made.
I think it would make sense if you can show some improvement over the last application period or if you think you have a better idea. If you're just applying just for the sake of getting something in on the off-chance it might get accepted, then you start to look like that person who shows up at every American Idol tryout but hasn't done anything to improve their chances.
I get the impression that there are quite a few YCers that didn't make it on the first application.
PG has said in the past that the most compelling argument you can make to investors is that you're going to keep forging ahead, with or without them. At the end of the day, YC are investors too.
It would seem like the best approach would be to apply with a better version of your original app, because that illustrates that you are persistent (you weren't just looking for an idea to get in with) and can improve upon the initial concept. Best case scenario, IMO, your idea is the same but with more traction (I'm assuming of course there is/was a prototype involved).
According to PG sometimes you dont get in, not because there is anything wrong with your application, but because there were so many others who were a better fit. In this case applying again isnt productive. And you shouldnt change your idea just to get into YC. Right?
