

Has a company ever rejected acceptance into Y Combinator - aml183

I always love reading applications of companies that were rejected from YCombinator (Eg. Buffer). What are examples of companies that got accepted into Ycombinator, but for whatever reason decided to not enter the program?
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tptacek
Yes; Sam Altman said so on EconTalk this week. Apparently it's only happened
once.

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argonaut
Both amarcus and ProblemFactory are incorrect - the link only lists companies
that were rejected by YC and went on to do well. Furthermore, as recently as a
few years ago the terms were less fixed - YC would call to make companies an
offer (although it was stated that the offer would usually be 7%). Even
further before that, it was possible to negotiate with YC. A rumor (completely
unconfirmed) that I heard somewhere on HN is that Sam Altman was able to
negotiate Paul Graham down.

I personally met one company that turned down YC. They've since went on to
raise more than $1.5MM. They thought YC wanted too much equity.

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ProblemFactory
Thanks for the clarification - I did not realise that companies are/were able
to negotiate the offer.

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amarcus
This link has a few examples:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7122999](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7122999)

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ProblemFactory
The poster seemed to ask for companies that: 1. applied to YC, 2. were
accepted, and 3. then turned down the offer.

But I'm not sure why that would ever happen - the terms and content of the YC
program are published in detail, so it would be a waste of everyone's time to
apply if a team is not planning to accept the offer.

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loumf
Being able to say you got a YC offer is somewhat useful. It's some validation
at least, even if you never use it to get a better offer.

