
We tried to hustle our way into YC after we got rejected - sabbakeynejad
https://veed.io/blog/rejected-from-yc/
======
filmgirlcw
I don't want to be a jerk to kids in their early 20s who are bootstrapping
their startup idea, but reading this account would actually confirm for me why
this team wasn't ready to be accepted into YC or a similar program.

A big part of the onus of the original product, at least, as it was launched,
was that it was "watermark free" and the way it was "sold" to end-users was
that it was a free service. Now, I can understand the initial rationale here
-- you want to get users, you start with free, and assume you'll pivot to paid
options/add-ons at some point or get sponsorship or other revenue streams, or
pretend it's still 2009 and that startups with no revenue can obtain
ridiculous valuations and then be acquired by Yahoo or whatever.

The problem is, it's no longer 2009 and investing strategies have changed.
Revenue has replaced users as the important growth metric for lots of
investors. (There are exceptions, I'm aware, but this is a general trend we've
seen over the last few years. Don't worry founders, the pendulum is bound to
go back in the other direction in another few years.)

Now, I don't know what the team's original business plan was for this service,
but based on the YC letter, it appears that they said "we'll start charging
eventually" and that led to the question about why you aren't already trying
that now, when you have 35,000 MAU. A fair question -- and one that really
represents more of a question about business plan rather than lack of MRR.

But the team read this as "if we can show MRR, we can prove we're ready" \--
except that wasn't and isn't the problem here. Yes, it's impressive that the
team was able to hack together a payment gateway and offer a pro product in a
weekend and obtain $500 in revenue (should be noted that this isn't recurring
and it won't be clear what the actual recurring revenue is for several
months), but the fact that it was done so haphazardly, and honestly, for what
looks like the wrong reasons (it wasn't about "this is best for the business"
it was about "this will get us into YC"), is the biggest red flag.

If you want to change a fundamental part of your product (no watermarks) and
make it a pro feature to entice users to pay, you're welcome to do that. It
may or may not work for existing users, and it's possible there are better
ways to extract revenue/add value. The truth is though, this was an idea done
at the last minute to try to secure placement in an accelerator, it doesn't
appear to be born out of actual business rationale for the product.

~~~
bksenior
This read like a business school professor. All young businesses are a fluid
experiment "out of business rationale" is a hindsight fluff statement. If
rationale informed effective product then a lot more people were successful.

Additionally, odds are that the best thing for the business (and founders)
would being admitted to YC over any product change they could possible make.

They had non zero odds and I think it was a clever plan all things considered.
If YC is looking at founders above everything else and less product, these
young dudes seem to be cut from the cloth.

~~~
filmgirlcw
> If rationale informed effective product then a lot more people were
> successful.

That's not necessarily true, as plenty of businesses fail because they don't
have a business plan for their product. The world is littered with great
products that failed because there was no business plan or the business plan
wasn't sustainable. Obviously, having a business plan doesn't make a
successful product (and I never one intimated otherwise), but in this case,
the feedback from YC was about the business and not about the product.

>Additionally, odds are that the best thing for the business (and founders)
would being admitted to YC over any product change they could possible make.

If by "best thing" you mean "could raise money to fund the product in absence
of a business plan" \-- you're probably right. Getting into YC or a similar
accelerator would make raising money easier for sure. But getting in doesn't
guarantee funding or success in any way shape or form.

>They had non zero odds and I think it was a clever plan all things
considered. If YC is looking at founders above everything else and less
product, these young dudes seem to be cut from the cloth.

I disagree that they had non zero odds. They were rejected and given a reason
why. The response to that rejection didn't actually answer the critique by YC
(and the founders don't seem to have understood what that critique was).
You're right that the product doesn't always matter when it comes to who gets
funding, but in this case, being "clever" just further proved that they didn't
actually understand that core feedback, which is wholly independent of
product.

Look, I hope these guys try again. I also hope they take up the offer for
office hours and take that feedback into perfecting their business model and
their product strategy so that they are more successful next time.

~~~
bksenior
>That's not necessarily true, as plenty of businesses fail because they don't
have a business plan for their product. The world is littered with great
products that failed because there was no business plan or the business plan
wasn't sustainable. That observation is a long horizon observation. In the
short horizon most businesses tend to stagnate and die because of interest and
growth. Unless theyre trying to grow an organic biz overtime (which applying
to YC seems to signal otherwise) going and getting in the ecosystem would be
by far the largest upside to the biz and more importantly the entrepreneurs.

> Combining the non-zero and best thing for the biz.

These are kids who by being in YC get expert observation and access to a
network that they would take a decade to build. The only scenario in which not
getting in is better is if they strike some insane gold pocket and they are
physically too busy to participate in YC. They had YC as a captive audience
and there was precedent for flexibility, thats non zero.

same same. I hope this serves as the intro to a story titled "The time YC
almost made another $5b."

------
d0m
So, that's the dichotomy of YC.

YC is an accelerator, and as such, needs to accelerate /something/. If you
join too early, then it's almost a distraction to getting the product out and
talking to users. However, hit the sweet spot and YC is an invaluable resource
to help you grow.

On the other hand, YC opens the door to so many opportunities and great
people, that even if you're too early, the net result is still a pure positive
for your career and startup.

~~~
dalton
Hey Dom, we worked together directly when you were in YC, and I deeply
disagree with your assessment that having progress helps a startup succeed in
YC.

The worst case scenario is a newly accepted YC startup with a little bit of
traction... just enough traction that they aren't willing to change
ideas/markets and not enough traction for them to actually know they have
product market fit. It's the uncanny valley of product-market fit. These
companies with a little bit of progress can spend months or years of their
life chasing what they later realize was a mirage.

When a new YC company enters the batch with very little or no traction (and
can move incredibly fast) they will longterm outperform companies accepted
with small traction most of the time. Based on the hundreds of companies I
have personally funded at YC, speed is the single most predictive variable of
if a startup will succeed - not traction at time of accept.

~~~
d0m
Hey Dalton, thanks for the answer, that's fair. I totally agree that in the
long-term, moving and failing fast is a net positive for both founders and YC.
I wonder how different the YC three-months experience is between founders who
have product-market fit vs the ones who don't? It seems like there's a
"cadence" to the program highly focused on growth culminating to demo day?

~~~
dalton
Tons of examples of no traction/fast moving teams out-performing, ie Brex
pivoted and had no growth or traction at demo day and it worked out pretty
well for them :)
[https://twitter.com/daltonc/status/1138952277404790784?s=21](https://twitter.com/daltonc/status/1138952277404790784?s=21)

Doing YC at their early state was perfect because it was the perfect
environment to come up with an idea like Brex.

~~~
sabbakeynejad
Hi Dalton OP here, appreciate your input here, Thank you.

Moving fast is something we are working at hard at. From a technical and
creative perspective.

Correct me if I am wrong. When you say moving fast, do you mean being nimble
and quick at pretty much everything, with the goal to find product-market fit?

------
prickledpear
It's great that YC provides feedback on why they don't accept (some)
companies. However, it's a bit disappointing to see that not having MRR is a
reason to reject a company. It seems like a lot of the successful YC companies
were accepted way before they were anywhere to close to revenue -- and some
were even working on a completely different product when accepted.

My hope is that MRR is sufficient, but not necessary for acceptance!

~~~
short_sells_poo
Maybe I just don't get the Silicon Valley culture, or perhaps I'm missing
something fundamental, but let me just get this straight:

1\. Startup has no revenue whatsoever, but ostensibly have good product. They
go pitch to investors and get rejected, likely because they have no revenue.

2\. They hack around for 1 (!) weekend and get their MRR to $500. Five hundred
bucks. They now go back to investors and say: hey look, we now have revenue
(peanuts really), can we get funding please?

In what world would those $500 be expected to make a difference? How is that a
proof of anything? I expect even really inept startups can somehow pull
together $500 revenue from friends and family.

I suppose I just don't get how $500 in revenue could be seriously considered
the tipping point between rejection to acceptance for investment?

To my layman reasoning, this is incredibly naive, but I'd like to be proven
wrong.

~~~
lukevdp
Having $500 in MRR proves two things:

1\. The product is something that people will pay for

2\. The team can sell it, at least a little bit

Both are huge validations of a startup

~~~
short_sells_poo
That's the thing. In my mind $500 proves nothing. Well, it proves that you can
get $500 a month. I think it says zero about the actual ability of this
business to become a success.

Put differently, if I believe in the idea behind a startup, I'm willing to
overlook the fact that they have no rapid growth yet. If the idea is not
enough to convince me, a miserable $500 is sure as hell not going to make a
difference. It's too little in too short a time. It says zero about customer
retention or satisfaction, etc. It's akin to taking two data points, zero
revenue and $500 MRR and then extrapolating the growth. Nobody but a fool
would believe such a metric.

If they went away, hustled hard for 2-3 months and got to say 50-100 paying
customers (with that number consistently growing), good reviews or some
feedback that customers actually like the product, I'd be more inclined to
think of it more than just a fluke.

~~~
filmgirlcw
I'm 100% with you.

And honestly, seeing something like this would make me less confident in a
startup, because as I said in another comment, the impetus for charging seems
to be completely tied to getting accepted by YC, rather than trying to build
revenue for the business. "Let's just hack our way to $500 then we can show we
have revenue and the objection they listed will be moot and we'll get
accepted."

The better move would be to have a solid plan for a pro product, start
charging, be able to show growth in paying users, and then reapply for the
winter YC class showing those data points.

------
whiddershins
At first I was with them, but when they summarized at the end I think they
missed the underlying point of the feedback.

The feedback was “why have you waited so long” not “this was too early for you
to apply”

The fact that the founders bent that around in their heads after changing
their actions, to me, indicates they aren’t quite getting what the email
implied.

But what do I know, I’ve never gotten in to YCombinator or launched a
successful startup.

~~~
kaybe
I might have missed the point too, could you expand a little?

~~~
whiddershins
This is obviously speculative, I’m not in anyone else’s head.

I interpreted that they were concerned about the thinking that went in to
making the decision not to begin charging people sooner.

I felt supported in that interpretation when the founders ended the article by
saying perhaps their company was at too early a point for the program.

The feedback seemed to imply they were too far along to have not started
charging, so interpreting that to mean they were not far along enough could
mean the feedback was responded to with direct action but the underlying
thinking remains unchanged.

Like I said, I have no idea if I’m right, but if I am then the last conclusion
paragraph validates the YC interviewer’s concern that there’s a deeper problem
about how the company is being approached.

------
slap_shot
> In March, we submitted our application, and kinda forgot about it.

> Two months later we got an email saying that a partner would like to speak
> to us.

This is a tangent, but I want to share something about my YC interview
experience for anybody ever in this position.

I filled out my application in February for the NYC interviews. They passed on
me for the early NYC interviews, but ~2 months later I got an email for
Mountain View interview.

During my interview, I was asked what my revenue was two months ago, and what
it was last month. When I gave my answers it created immediate disarray
between the three interviewers.

I walked through my numbers and could tell something was visibly wrong, but
time was ticking and I had to steer back to the product, vision and growth.

When I got my rejection email, the lead-in reason was that the revenue wasn't
clear (and to clarify, we are doing VERY well with revenue growth).

A bit perplexed, I went back to my application and realized what had happened.
The YC application asks for "what was your revenue last month, two months ago,
three months ago, etc)"

The partner was trying to get me to talk about what caused a 100% revenue
spike (and again, we're not talking about small revenue here) between February
and March. But when filling the answers out in February, those questions are
anchored to December and January. That spike was just onboarding customers.

As I personally had to live through the hell of onboarding these customers
from December to January, it never occurred to me that he was asking about
that spike while looking at my "last month" and "two months ago" revenue.

I read my application a lot the week leading up to my interview. It never
occurred to me change my answers to realign with the two month gap between
when I filled it out and when it was accepted. I'm not sure I would even do
that now, knowing what happened.

So the upshot is this: if you fill out your YC application well in advance, be
prepared to speak to your financials (and company as a whole) both as are they
are today, but also as they appear in your application, because the answer to
"what was your revenue last month" is different depending on whether the
partner is referring to your application, or the last calendar month.

~~~
SilasX
That seems like it was a failure of the interviewer to ask the right (or any?)
clarifying questions.

~~~
slap_shot
Possibly, but the onus is on the applicant to drive through things like this,
not the interviewers. Again, nobody in the room had the luxury of
understanding what was happening at the time. Hopefully my experience can help
others.

~~~
SilasX
Nah, there's definitely an onus on VCs not to miss out on a super hot startup
because they mixed up two months because of a bad comparison of two times
expressed in relative terms.

------
plehoux
missiveapp.com and conferenceBadge.com, my two startups, have both been
rejected at the interview phase. Our yearly revenue for both now stands in the
7 digits. We are still just a team of 3 + 1 employee, 100% bootstrapped. Life
is good. My advice, keep pushing!

[https://missiveapp.com/](https://missiveapp.com/)
[https://www.conferencebadge.com](https://www.conferencebadge.com)

~~~
cdubzzz
Apropos of nothing, this little marketing page is pretty great --
[https://www.conferencebadge.com/why-use-conference-
badge](https://www.conferencebadge.com/why-use-conference-badge)

~~~
sithlord
so, it took anna 10 hours, and lets assume anna gets paid 25 dollars an hour,
so a cost of 250 dollars. Shelley, used the conference badge, and at 1.79 for
the fully shipped version of the badge, it will cost 582 dollars. So,
essentially, Shelley paid 332 dollars for QR codes and convenience.

Is it worth it? probably. but maybe not.

~~~
djsumdog
I think this depends on one-off vs long term. If this group is going to be
doing 2~3 conferences a year, learning how to print labels yourself or is
valuable skill. You might even have a designer on your team that could work
with a local print shop (allowing a personal relationship and even last minute
badges so you're not handwriting last minute speakers).

There's a one time cost of learning all that stuff, and then each year you
just reuse those same templates and skills with a new logo/graphics from your
design guy.

If this is something your team/volunteer group/etc. rarely does, then it's
probably worth just paying conference badges. It's a trade-off.

If it's a non-profit thing, consider open souring the process and CC licensing
the designs to help others doing the same thing.

~~~
ValentineC
I organise conferences as a hobby, and I've been manually doing mail merge on
badges for the past few years.

It takes me anywhere between 5–15 minutes to set things up, and my biggest
annoyance throughout the process is dealing with CSV character encodings.

I think the main value the service provides is that it provides "guaranteed"
next-day delivery. My print shop gives me a fair amount of crap for not
sending my badges to print a few days in advance.

On the other hand, it's so much less work for organisers to print blank white
boxes, and let attendees fill in their own preferred names at check-in.

------
csomar
Check this out: [https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/18/here-are-
the-85-startups-t...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/18/here-are-
the-85-startups-that-launched-today-at-y-combinators-w19-demo-day-1/)

Many YC startups don't charge anything. Here is one that seems still to be
figuring stuff out ([https://www.54gene.com/](https://www.54gene.com/)). One
that seems to be figuring out who and how much to charge
([https://ultralig.ht/](https://ultralig.ht/)). In fact, I'd like that someone
goes through the startups and deduce how many of these are making any money or
have strategies to make any money.

Here is what I think is going on: YC is trying to be polite (bullshitting)
about the rejection. They won't straightforward tell you: You suck. Or you are
not sexy enough to be in bed with. And it's fair enough. When was the last
time a potential hookup told you they won't have sex with you because your
face is ugly or you have an ugly belly.

YC probably picks up on intuition. You can't judge a dog for 10 minutes. They
are using subconscious cues based on their experience. They are looking for
founders. The startups with high MRR are probably suckers for scaling that
made it at monetizing a product to market. YC takes them (expensive %7 for
cheap mentoring) because they can afford that.

You can't change the built-in neural networks inside YC brains. They might be
going against their intuition on the diversity front because data has
suggested they should or they are trying to look cool.

What this team did is basically show up next morning and have a black t-shirt
because they figured out that I don't like guys in white t-shirts. That's not
going to make me like them. Probably hate them more. It shows lack of
consciousness and maturity. This is not a government position with cold
requirements where you need to check the boxes.

~~~
Matticus_Rex
The fact that many YC startups don't charge anything doesn't mean that _this_
startup has a good reason not to be charging. I think the assumption that YC
gave them a BS reason is absolutely unwarranted.

Personally, I love the hustle. It was absolutely worth a shot, and by the next
batch they'll have a lot of data to show. Most _great_ first-time founders
have no idea what the hell they're doing, and it's totally forgivable for them
to have waited a bit longer than necessary to start charging. They responded
to feedback from smart people who know what they're talking about, and are
moving ahead.

~~~
keithnz
Yeah, I got the impression that YC didn't see why they weren't charging for
what they had since it is a liked and a viable product with a pretty simple
way to make revenue.

I hope these guys do well, I like the hustle also!

------
camjohnson26
These founders haphazardly threw a new paid feature into their app just to try
to impress the YC team? They should have taken the time to do market research
and do it right rather than risk alienating their user base. I wonder if
getting rejected was a big enough blow to their ego that they couldn’t see
clearly, just like college applicants will go to top ranked colleges with no
concern for the price or the risk/reward profile of that decision, but instead
so that they can brag about being the best. YC is “the best”, but that doesn’t
make it right for every startup.

~~~
GraffitiTim
They took the feedback to heart, built fast, and got paying users! Where's the
big mistake there?

I think one of the good things about YC, is if you try to optimize for getting
into YC, you're actually building your startup in a constructive manner.

~~~
albertgoeswoof
They might have just killed their MAU growth potential

Imagine if FB had a premium plan in 2008, they wouldn’t have made it.

In this case it probably makes sense to charge early on, but it doesn’t look
like they did much research on the decision

~~~
StephenCanis
They did get advice from some of the most experience startup investors in the
world. Who's biggest question was why they hadn't started charging users.
Taking advice from highly experienced people is probably better then trying to
do your own research.

How would you even research such a decision if not ask very experience startup
founders and investors?

------
rococode
I wonder if the results thus far actually validate the concerns raised by YC
("hard to know whether people are willing to pay")? $250 MRR strikes me as
rather low for 35K MAU - assuming that's 50 users it's just over a 0.1%
conversion rate, and a little over 2 weeks in I'd expect most of those monthly
users to have come across the option to pay at some point by now. Nonetheless,
wish you guys the best of luck in figuring out the monetization!

------
dalton
I would recommend “hustling” for a period of time _before_ the interview,
rather than as a reaction to the outcome of it :)

------
wenbin
Thanks for sharing your YC story!

Some personal experience: I applied to YC for 8 times over the past few years.
Got one onsite interview (late 2017). Got rejected. I documented that onsite
interview experience here: [https://broadcast.listennotes.com/my-y-combinator-
interview-...](https://broadcast.listennotes.com/my-y-combinator-interview-
experience-w18-c12e6d98c1d0)

Probably YC is not a good fit for everyone. I stopped applying to YC since
then. My small startup is doing well now, so I'm happy :)

------
dannykwells
I kinda wonder, if you believe what's missing in your platform is a single
feature that can be implemented in 2 days, do you really think YC wouldnt
realize that too?

So this is likely not the reason for the rejection.

I would have _even more_ worries about these founders after this stunt because
it shows a lack of self awareness and strategic insight.

I'm in no way affiliated but Id guess YC is looking for foundational
advantages and paradigm changing ideas in their companies. You can't pivot to
those in 2 days.

~~~
adrianmsmith
I think it's not about the technical implementation of the payment feature (as
you say, that's not that hard), it's about if anyone would use it (i.e. if
anyone would pay).

Before they implemented the feature it was unclear if anyone would pay, after
they implemented the feature it was clear that at least some people would pay.

------
natch
Sort of an aside but it’s really impressive to see the level of care the YC
team puts into the feedback provided in the email. It would be easy to just
have a generic rejection. Considering the number of teams they are
interviewing, it’s even more impressive. Kudos.

------
ricardobeat
I don't think this looks very good for them. They suddenly added watermarks
over their videos to 'encourage' users to sign-up. A pro plan with _added_
value would have been more considerate, or even a full switch to paid users
with a notice period.

They are also displaying company logos under 'Trusted by thousands globally'
that obviously are not paying customers since they didn't have subscription
plans before.

------
auntienomen
Your goal shouldn't be to get into YC in a year. Your goal should be to not
need YC in a year.

~~~
erikpukinskis
YC is just the gatekeeper to a network of wealth and expertise in scaling. I
guess no one really _needs_ it, in the sense that you can look up how to
scale.

But if you’re a VC-style company, and you’re trying to grow fast (and if
you’re not you do not want to go through YC) then your business model is by
definition “EAT ALL THE MARKET”.

If you’re an early stage company, even if you can bite off a big chunk of
market, it’s fairly certain the YC old boys network can help you bite off
another big, non-overlapping chunk.

Anywhere in the sub-$100M valuation range, that’s probably worth 6% just in
terms of getting out in front of other growing competitors (or competitors-to-
be). It doesn’t change your path, but it changes the dates on the graph.

That’s assuming you are a VC-mindset company (centralize revenue streams
around a few owners, grow fast, get liquid).

There are other kinds of companies who “will not need YC soon” but mostly
those companies shouldn’t want YC in the first place.

------
teilo
How many of those paid subscriptions are the result of people stuck in the
middle of editing projects that they suddenly could not finish because of the
watermarks?

------
rsweeney21
> We had positive feedback from YC...

There was a time when I thought positive feedback from a VC meant something. 2
startups and $16M in VC funding later I've realized that it doesn't. Having a
VC tell you your startup is awesome is like having your mom tell you your
startup is awesome. They have no incentive to be honest with you and every
incentive to have you walk away with a positive impression of the firm.

Founders REALLY need to stop looking to venture capitalists for validation of
their business. Your metrics are all the validation you need, especially if
those metrics are profit or revenue. Putting confidence in the feedback of a
VC can cause you to ignore warning signs.

Even if they write you a huge check, it doesn't mean you have a good business.
All it means is that you are good at fundraising.

~~~
davnicwil
This is a really great comment. Positive feedback from any third party, VC or
otherwise, is information that can be factored into your own 'model' of
whether your business is a good one but it seems to me the overwhelming
factors ought to be either the real numbers you mentioned and your own
(hopefully) more complete and considered analysis of your market and
opportunity, using the information and hypotheses that only you have.

Positive feedback is nice but it should have zero effect on whether or not you
pursue a business idea - if you weren't going to pursue the idea without it,
there are probably fundamental reasons for that, that should probably override
the reasons behind the positive feedback anyway.

------
staunch
This kind of feedback is not to be taken at face value. YC says very clearly
that the point of the interview is to judge the quality of the founder(s).
Whatever excuse they invent to write in the rejection email is really nothing
more than that: a polite excuse.

They don't feel that they can be frank and just say: _" We think you're
probably bad founders based on the fact you have been very slow to charge
customers."_

Just remember that they're attempting to judge the potential of a team of
human beings in 10 minutes. Realize how fundamentally flawed (and demeaning)
that concept is. It's quite possible, and even likely, that their interview
selection process is worse than random chance.

Of course, they think they're good at picking. But this belief is based on the
theory that the companies that they don't pick will succeed even without YC's
help i.e. that there would be an embarrassing anti-portfolio.

Since many of YC's most successful founders acknowledge that they wouldn't
have succeeded without YC, that theory is obviously bunk.

IMHO the YC application and selection process is reasonably good. It's
something approaching a crowdsourced process. The interview is them injecting
their egos into the process, to the detriment of themselves and founders.

The problem is perpetuated because the people that do luck their way in are
then immediately convinced that the system works. After all, it did select
them, it must be pretty darn good. This is the destructive power of ego.

Someone could beat YC at selection simply by copying them and removing the
interview part of the process (i.e. just accept the top N applications).
Crowdsourcing is going to most closely approximate the customer point of view,
and that's what ultimately matters for startups.

It's okay that YC is kind of bad at their core function. They're still good
enough to stay in business and it's their prerogative. It's just a shame that
they're not improving and that there isn't anything better, yet.

------
Animats
There are tons of video editors, all the way back to Adobe Premiere. OpenShot,
which is free and open source, isn't bad. What do these people have that they
don't?

(Yes, it's "in the cloud". So?)

~~~
edjrage
I almost can't believe I had to scroll this far to find a sensible comment.

Honest question (as someone very ignorant about the business world), why do
people spend money on this stuff? And why do so many people (based on the
comments here) act like it's OK to create such products (i.e. products that
bring literally nothing innovative or useful to the table)? By OK I mean
ethically, considering that there are so many more pressing problems in the
world.

~~~
arkades
> And why do so many people (based on the comments here) act like it's OK to
> create such products (i.e. products that bring literally nothing innovative
> or useful to the table)? By OK I mean ethically, considering that there are
> so many more pressing problems in the world.

Just to be clear, I want to understand that you're asserting:

1) It is morally unethical to create a non-innovative product

and

2) It is morally unethical to work on something other than "a pressing
problem" in the world, as you define pressing problems

?

Or are you saying,

1) In a world with "more pressing problems", it is unethical to work on
something as low-value as a non-innovative product

?

And for context: what projects do you feel are ethically acceptable ways for
people to spend their time on, and what do you do?

------
jvagner
"venerable" should be "vulnerable", and Mountain View is mis-capitalized in a
few places... :-)

~~~
camjohnson26
There’s a “where” that should be a “were”

~~~
stOneskull
a "the" instead of a "their"

------
paulsutter
They should put this much hustle into the business for the sake of the
business, every week. Not just one weekend for YC.

~~~
jolmg
Besides the point that the article doesn't indicate they don't, that amount of
hustle might not be maintainable in the long run.

~~~
cbetti
Starting a business gives you a broad enough diversity of things to do that
you can sustain 90 hours per week dedicated to the effort for a long, long
time.

Coding burnout? Refine your pitch deck and cold call materials. Designing
burnout? Pick up the phone and sell. Isolation burnout? Go pitch at a local
pitch event or find advisors at a business plan competition.

When you switch focus like this, you free up exhausted parts of your brain and
body to give them a chance to recover without disconnecting from your startup,
and you get a cross-pollination effect, where each of these activities informs
one another very nicely.

------
djsumdog
Hmm. Some rapid development. I wonder if they wrote test cases for the
subscription functionality. When they had that test-payment gateway go to
production, did they add safeguards to prevent that from happening again?

I mean, it seems like an impressive story, but when I read it, all I see is
potential technical debt.

I don't think I'd like to be back in startup culture. I really like solid
testing, and I hate moving so fast that we don't create that safety net.

~~~
Permit
This sounds a bit like "Taking out a loan to pay your medical bills is
imprudent financial advice".

On the surface it might be true but it doesn't matter if the alternative is
you (or your startup) dying. Ultimately only the authors know their
circumstances and the trade offs they have to consider.

------
dheera
Raise from another VC (if you need) and keep moving. Don't raise if you don't
need to, obviously. Like dating, if they don't want you, it's their loss.
Hounding them will only make you sound needy, and unfortunately people
(especially investors) are wired to give to the people who least need it, in
general.

------
mychael
Anyone else get the impression that this team is more excited about getting
into YC than building a successful business?

------
simonebrunozzi
> Over the space of a year, we had a 60% MoM Growth Rate, 35K MAU and a great
> team!

I smile when I read "X% MoM growth" and the starting numbers are obviously
very little. I think it's a BS metric when presented this way.

Besides that, congrats on hitting 35k MAU. Not a small feat.

------
jacobsenscott
I hope you start making enough money before next YC round that you don't need
to sacrifice a percentage of your company to investors - remember vc funding
should be a last resort, not a goal.

------
samfisher83
I thought YC main thing was growth not revenue. Why did they get rejected for
revenue? Also making someone fly overseas for a 10 minute interview to get
rejected really sucks.

I hate the all day interview, but if you are coming from overseas then maybe
give them more than 10 mins.

~~~
wolco
The flying overseas for a 10 minute reject interview shows they don't value
your time.

------
essive
Too much emphasis on YC - there are others

------
emcrazyone
why stop with YC? There are other VCs that might pull the trigger, no?

------
dannylandau
cool video editing tool!

------
harrydry
great read

------
stOneskull
this ticks all the buttons, ha

------
hartator
> kinda forgot about it

At least you didn’t ended loosing one of your dragons because of it.

