The morning after a rejection. Now what's next? - rokhayakebe
======
danw
_Whats Next?_

Take a step back for a day and look at your idea/application. Did you explain
clearly what the idea was? Will it create value for users? How will you get
people to adopt it?

Once you've figured out what went wrong, fix it then get on with creating your
app. Creating a startup is filled with setbacks, the trick is to keep going.

------
SwellJoe
Depends on why you applied.

If you applied on a "Let's see if we can convince Paul to let us come to YC
Summer Camp, and maybe we'll be rich this time next year" whim with not a lot
of code written...maybe you go back to school and work on other ideas. Try
again for Winter with a different idea or more code and a better presentation.
Or apply for a job at an existing startup. Some of the WFP guys are hiring
(Parakey, Zenter, and a few others) as are the Xobni guys from last years
progem--all are wicked smart, have lined up some funding, and would be very
helpful to you in your goal of becoming an entrepreneur.

If, on the other hand, you've already written mumble-thousand LoC, and you are
within a couple of months of launching, and you really believe in your idea
and product, contact some other angels and seed investors. They exist. They
aren't as cool as YC, but they have money and they have connections, too. As a
last resort, if you're in the wrong city for raising money (anything other
than Silicon Valley or Boston), warm up your credit card and give it a go. You
can live for three months on a credit card (I've done it several times...I'm
on my second company, the first being self-funded and sometimes credit card
funded). Obviously, if you've got a family to support the "warm up your credit
card" method of funding is right out. Otherwise, just keep your health
insurance current, pay your taxes, and live on nothing but ramen and buy
nothing between now and launch day.

If your project is too big to launch in that short time, then that's why you
were rejected by YC. Winnow it down to the smallest piece that has value and
launch. Our project (Virtualmin) was huge (several hundred thousand lines of
code, by the time you factor in Webmin and Usermin). But we were already
selling product, and figured we were within a couple of months of "finishing"
the beta period (we were off by a little bit, as we're still a couple of weeks
away from wrapping it up six months later--partly because of the major
strategy shifts we made during WFP2007).

------
rokhayakebe
Hi. What are going to do now? What was your idea? Ours was a DIY mobile
content aggregation & distribution platform. Grab your favorite content on the
web. Mix it, mash it, make it mobile, distribute it.

~~~
bootload
I've got an idea similar to this, concentrating on aggregating your own
content.

One of the implications of choosing this model is that you are limiting your
audience and potential market. Is it what users want, NOW? For me this is a
need as I have lots of distributed stuff over 10 years but for newer users
most of their stuff is in a database, CMS etc.

The market is short sited in this respect. From what I can tell there is a
distinct lack of demand. All the top level blogs are platform focused
(blogger, wordpress, typepad, mt). These services are so good they don't seem
to go down, thus where's the need?

It's a good idea btw, because if you own your own data you become the
definitive source. BTW how are you solving the following problems?

\- extracting data from services with no API?

\- extracting data from services with API's (have to do coding for each
service)

\- problem of input? Service side input & extraction via API v's Client side
input and exporting via API's (if the content is yours)

\- How do you visualise the mixing of data?

\- Which (key) services do you concentrate on extracting data? Or is it any
service?

They key things I got out of thinking making a biz out of this particular idea
is that you can get into problems ...

\- focus on individual users and miss out any network effects (user foo
connects to user bar).

\- not creating a new market

\- restricting sales by creating a secondary market because users use other
services to create and yours (if needed or others) to backup.

So while I'm still building this tool, I'll be looking at areas in this space
that I can extract the best/better value (something that people want, faster,
savings in time & effort etc) and looking for new ideas associated (and new)
while solving this particular problem space for me. Remember _Joshua
Scharacter_ took about 4-5 ideas before he refined delicious & created a
useful site.

My gut instinct is that manipulating, saving and creating data (in its various
forms) is a growing space and finding the edge niche is a potential starting
point.

__Reference __

[0] Ycombinator-StartupSchool, 'Joshua_Schacter, MP3, 28Mb'

<http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Ycombinator-
StartupSchool/~3/106570501/Joshua_Schacter.mp3>

~~~
rokhayakebe
hi BL, like your input. send me an email so we can discuss off site.

~~~
bootload
em's are not shown. check my bio for em ~
<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=bootload>

------
louisadekoya
I recently posted on dealing with rejection in your startup venture. You may
find some encouragement in my short story towards the end. The post is at:
<http://www.ideatagging.com/good-entrepreneurs-always-accept-no-for-an-
answer/>

------
npk
You may consider posting your application on the web, and asking people here
to read it. I have never applied for investor funding, but I believe that I
could give constructive feedback.

You will expose yourself to the risk of theft. On the other hand, ideas are
only half the battle.

Good luck.

------
floozyspeak
Embrace failure.

Think about it as a test. They didn't reject you, its a test. A mission, a
quest that will give you 5g, 6000xp, and faction with YCombinator, but
remember its an elite quest, bring others.

Do not fail, well fail, but do not fail at failing!

