
Ask HN: What startups were refused from YC but became successful? - mw67
Alternatively, what startups did the YC partners failed to see become successful, but did so?
======
gadders
SamA needs to do an Anti-Portfolio :-) --
[http://www.bvp.com/portfolio/antiportfolio](http://www.bvp.com/portfolio/antiportfolio)

~~~
adamzerner
> In some cases, we were making a conscious act of generosity to another,
> younger venture firm, down on their luck, who we felt could really use a
> billion dollars in gains.

What? I never would have thought that firms did this.

And the fact that it's the first of two reasons listed sends the message that
it's something they do more than just once in a while.

~~~
alex_sf
They're just being facetious. That reason is immediately followed up by:

> In other cases, our partners had already run out of spaces on the year's
> Schedule D and feared that another entry would require them to attach a
> separate sheet.

~~~
adamzerner
I see. Thanks.

------
yesimahuman
The Ionic team applied to YC before we were Ionic (back w/ Codiqa, our visual
design tool for jQuery Mobile apps). I was freaking out since they didn't
email us until the day after the interview! I guess we were right on the edge.

Oh well, was a fun experience and we've been successful w/o it.

(for reference: [http://ionicframework.com/](http://ionicframework.com/))

~~~
sgt
Somehow I missed this. At first sight I figured Ionic was Yet Another
Framework, but this looks potentially amazing. Will check it out.

~~~
beermann
Pacifica ([http://thinkpacifica.com](http://thinkpacifica.com)) is built on
Ionic. We're also featured in iTunes right now, just a note that it's very
possible to build beautiful hybrid applications. While the company isn't a
success quite yet, we've been rejected from YC twice as well.

------
bazillion
As a sort of real-time answer, my startup[1][2] just had a booth at the
NMX/NAB show in Las Vegas and completely blew up from a user acquisition
perspective, and had applied to this upcoming round without getting an
interview. We wanted to sign about 8 blogs in order to cover the costs of
going to the show, and wound up signing over 1200 blogs, 5 major retailers, a
couple licensing deals, and a lot of smaller retailers (some fashion startups
among them) whose products we could list in our catalog.

I'm kind of glad that the interview wasn't even an option, since we're based
out of San Diego and it simplifies the logistics of our operations for not
having to move to SF for a period. Having no idea of how NMX/NAB was going to
go, YC seemed like the best way to get our idea out there whilst getting their
great support system. Now, we can just go heads-down in development and
prepare for our June release.

It's always extremely discouraging to get rejections -- we got rejected from
EvoNexus[3], TechCrunch Disrupt NY, and YCombinator (twice). This pretty much
tells me that I'm horrible at filling out applications. I'd like to think that
if the YC partners had walked up and talked to us at our booth, we would have
definitely gotten the interview.

This Vegas trip was the most amazing thing that has happened since I came up
with the idea of pleenq[4], because we barely had to sell the product --
people were so excited by the possibilities it would bring, and about all the
monetization opportunities it opens up. Most of our customers were referrals
from others who had seen our booth, and were told to "make sure they saw
pleenq before they left the show". I closed every single person I talked to at
our booth over the 4 days of the show, which was basically the highest form of
encouragement I could have hoped for.

[1] [https://facebook.com/pleenq](https://facebook.com/pleenq) and
[http://pleenq.com](http://pleenq.com)

[2] Demo of PLEENQ that we showed at NAB/NMX:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wu4gaiaA7I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wu4gaiaA7I)

[3] A San Diego-based incubator that takes 0% equity and is really great for
startups with a little bit of traction

[4] Pleenq lets you tag items in any image on the internet and link them to
where they can be purchased

~~~
pa5tabear
Did you intentionally mix serif and sans-serif fonts on your website?

It made my amateur design hackles stand up.

~~~
ch_sm
same here. in principle, one can mix and match serif and sans-serif fonts as
deemed fitting, but this here seems to be a mistake. the designers wanted to
use a font named Arvo, but failed to include it via @font-face. thus, the
browser falls back to the default serif font.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
That's... quite an unprofessional mistake to make.

If you have Arvo, the design looks sort-of-okay. I have more of a problem with
the ad copy.

"Easily tag items to where they can be purchased" is non-standard English and
doesn't do a great job of communicating what's going on.

I had to chew through it a couple of times to work out what it meant.

------
arihant
Couchbase (then CouchOne) seems to be doing pretty well. SendGrid, Buffer,
Storenvy, are others that come to mind.

I think that there are more founders that were rejected by YC that became
successful, not startups.

~~~
mw67
interesting comment re founders. probably the reason why drew from dropbox
applied a second time with a different idea.

------
nmcfarl
I’ll bite and say my firm CastingWords (
[http://castingwords.com](http://castingwords.com) )

Even though just existing 9 years after the interview would have been a
failure condition for our build to flip mindset at the time - but today it’s
paying the founders salaries and still providing intersting challenges - so a
success as we define it.

And it must be said that the advice we got in our interview (that we rejected
- no doubt one of the reasons we were turned down) was dead on - not just for
what it would take to make the company a successful startup, but also for
seeing some of the challenges in the road ahead. Just the interview was a
fantastically useful.

And the fact that we rejected the advice was probably a good indicator that
what we really wanted out of our company was not a startup, but rather a
platform to play with interesting technology and business problems and make
money doing it. Startups really aren’t for everyone. YC was part of us
discovering that.

~~~
mw67
Can I ask what was the advice that you turned down? it's very interesting that
after all this time you still consider that the interview was _fantastically
useful_. I'll consider applying for mine just to hear their thoughts.

~~~
nmcfarl
It's fantastically useful as a touch point. It's a point that,
retrospectively, the road forked and it changed who we are and what we do, and
sort of defined our values. We compare ourselves, and our competitors, to the
theoretical company we could've been fairly frequently.

As for the advice even if it was shocking at the time it doesn't seem that
scary these days. It does seem a little prescient. The big one was to ditch
our largest supplier, Amazon Mechanical Turk, build it ourselves and compete
with them, as our success would be limited by them. This wasn't something we
were willing to do at the time, we viewed them handling those problems as a
major leg up for us. However in the end much of this was correct and building
our own (more limited version) was part of us being financially successful as
a company.

Most of the advice consisted of start up tropes, applied to our particular
business. They basically told us to dream audacious dreams, do difficult
things that don't scale to boot strap and build relationships while doing it.
But they didn't use any of those words and did apply them specifically to our
problems which was pretty helpful.

But the real value was as a touchstone, and illustrating how far ahead people
who are good at this can see

------
thom_nic
I think SendGrid initially applied to YC before getting into TechStars. See
[http://www.quora.com/Why-was-SendGrid-rejected-from-
YCombina...](http://www.quora.com/Why-was-SendGrid-rejected-from-YCombinator)

------
will_brown
I have been rejected each and every time I have applied, and have submitted
with various ideas/projects. However, the most recent project is patent-
pending software that allows drivers to hire ticket defense law firms without
the need for human involvement. The proverbial...Rocket Lawyer for Ticket
Defense.

Our software has been live since September with a Florida Ticket Defense Firm
we have seen great traction and growth (400 clients in the last 90 days), and
we appear to be on schedule to offer our software to law firms nationwide
starting next month. I am not sure to date this could be defined as a success
in the YC sense, we have had no funding, we have had no media coverage, no VCs
on the board...but there has been local market adoption of our product and the
potential to scale this seems attainable even if boot-strapping.

Edit: To be clear I am not saying YC defines success as funding, or media
coverage...but show me a YC company that has achieved anyones definition of
success without getting Funding and media coverage as a step along the way.

~~~
biot
How are you different from Fixed?

[http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/20/tech/mobile/fixed-app-
parking-...](http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/20/tech/mobile/fixed-app-parking-
tickets/)

In terms of traction, you got 400 people in a quarter (and how many of those
routinely get tickets?) vs. Fixed's waiting list of 25000 signups from more
than a year ago.

~~~
will_brown
Everything...Fixed is an App that facilitates the resolution of _parking
tickets_ fought by in-house staff (I think non-attorneys). Our software is for
a driver who gets a _traffic ticket_ and our software connects drivers with
law firms licensed to fight the ticket and offer transparent pricing. The
transparent/automated pricing is the basis for our pending patent and what
differentiates our software.

On the business side Fixed's 25k waiting list...none of them are paying
customers, of those who are not on the waiting list and using the app, Fixed
gets nothing when they challenge a ticket and lose (which appears to be 80%
[1]), but when Fixed wins I think they get 25% of the original fine. I think
more generally Fixed wants to offer "Justice as a Service" and start
challenging all kinds of quasi-legal problems that do not require a licensed
lawyer, which is a tremendous space and I look forward to seeing them grow. Of
our 400 in the last 90 days, they are paying clients of our partner law firm,
and the relationship is between the client and law firm, not us and the
client.

[1] [http://autoweek.com/article/car-news/fixed-parking-ticket-
ap...](http://autoweek.com/article/car-news/fixed-parking-ticket-app-not-so-
great)

~~~
andrewchambers
I hate patents, good thing my country got rid of software patents.

------
pshin45
Munchery was rejected by YC after the interview[1], and they have since become
arguably the most successful and fastest-growing[2] "prepared food" startup in
Silicon Valley and the US.

(More than Sprig, despite Sprig receiving significantly more tech press
coverage.)

[1] [https://medium.com/@munchery/pitch-your-
life-2f170eab933b](https://medium.com/@munchery/pitch-your-life-2f170eab933b)

[2] They raised a $28 million Series B round this time last year.

------
awwstn
The team at Keen.io recently shared a fantastic blog post about being rejected
on stage at YC startup school, and their success since then:
[https://keen.io/blog/116400439081/lessons-from-a-failed-
yc-p...](https://keen.io/blog/116400439081/lessons-from-a-failed-yc-pitch-
with-paul-graham)

~~~
Mahn
> Then I jumped on Hacker News and there’s a post on “How Not to Talk to
> Investors” and it had two videos, and I was one of the examples of how not
> to do this, basically being publicly humiliated.

Well, aren't we a lovely bunch. Good for him he didn't give up.

~~~
DanBC
I'd be interested to see which thread it was.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3172273](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3172273)

------
paragpatelone
Depends on what you mean by success. If you mean being a profitable
bootstrapped business there are probably tons of companies. Companies that
went on raise series A and beyond some companies might be out there.

However I have feeling success for YC is having a company become a Unicorn.
The question to ask is which startups that didn't get into YC are now
Unicorns.

------
nkoren
Some friends of mine started www.overleaf.com, and were rejected by YC a while
later. They haven't had an exit yet, but as far as I can tell they're doing
exceptionally well.

------
elmyraduff
Buffer

------
santiagobasulto
Give me a year and I'll say: "mine" :)

Edit: removed name of my startup to avoid "click-bait"

~~~
IgorPartola
Please don't. I suspect, like many here, I find many interesting and useful
project via posts like this. I especially dislike it when someone shares a
story of their startup or project, but then doesn't include the name, so I
can't put it in context.

That's not to say I'm in favor of blatant self promotion, but I think people
on HN are more shy about their projects than they ought to be.

~~~
santiagobasulto
I agree with you 100%. But I also understand that self-promotion might be
uncomfortable for some people, so I just try to be respectful with them.

~~~
brlewis
I am uncomfortable with you deleting the name of your startup.

~~~
jacquesm
It is his company.

------
MicroBerto
I think the guys from [https://www.Pay4Bugs.com](https://www.Pay4Bugs.com)
did. I'm a user of theirs (crowdsourced bug testing for apps / websites /
software)...

They've been developing tons of new features and seem to be getting more and
more major positive press every week.

But if nothing else, this is definitely one of those 'invest in the founders'
situations... Larry and CS are crazy smart and are now at that solid
_experienced-but-not-too-old_ age.

~~~
jeromegv
Can you explain what is too old for you? What is the impact of being "too
old"?

~~~
MicroBerto
It differs from person to person, but there's definitely a point where most of
us have an energy level drop-off or family commitments that make a sheer-
hustle startup life far more difficult.

I think the early-to-mid 30s is a perfect age for most. "Old enough to do it
_right_ , but young enough to do it _all night long_ "

------
iamwil
Lightsail.

------
Alex3917
I know there was a mobile gaming company that was very highly valued, can't
remember the name though.

------
freshfey
Sahil Lavingia, founder of Gumroad, applied to YC with his iPhone App Dayta

------
endlessvoid94
How do you define "successful"?

------
nickhould
Sendgrid was rejected from YC.

------
jklein11
None. Acceptance into YC is the ultimate measure of success /s

------
lighthawk
I'm surprised by how few are listed here and that "successful" wasn't even
defined by any parameters in the initial question and no one has mentioned
that yet. Does successful mean profitable? Reached some revenue target? Has
grown organically by some amount? Didn't fail?

~~~
wodenokoto
I think this is more interesting if the parameters of success is kept broad.

