
Show HN: Rejection Conditioner for YC Applications - davidlee1435
http://rejectionconditioner.com
======
hardlianotion
My old friend H. Pringle scripted a rejection letter that looked a little like
(please forgive my liberal re-interpretation):

Dear _,

Thank you for your rejection letter dated ___. As you may imagine, I have
received a lot of fine rejection letters, and you will appreciate that it is
impossible for me to accept them all. I will therefore be starting employment
with you on ____.

Regards and best wishes, H. Pringle

------
ludicast
I once had an idea for a non-profit[1]. Started to fill out an application,
got about 1/5 of the way through, abandoned it because I decided it wasn't
something I'd commit to, and never submitted it.[2]

Then about a month later, a rejection _still_ floated its way into my inbox.
It really stung even though I hadn't applied that round :).

P.S. - if that rejection came from someone actually viewing it, and not some
autosender, that's kind of a lightweight privacy violation, at least from a
usability standpoint. Most would think that an unsubmitted application would
automatically be an unread one as well. But since it was in the non-profit
category maybe the screener had extra time on his/her hands.

1 - chronic disease studies for multiple blue-color workplaces 2 - never did
video, so couldn't have been accidentally submitted

~~~
writeslowly
I had the reverse happen to me with a recruiting company that shows up
occasionally on HN. I had started filling out a profile in the evening, and
when I returned to finish it the next morning I already had a rejection email
sitting in my inbox.

I probably submitted something on accident and just didn't notice it, but it
still hurt when I sat down at my desk that morning and discovered I'd been
rejected before I'd even managed to fill in all of my personal information.

~~~
notyourwork
Maybe they rejected you due to incomplete information? I think you are worth
it. :)

~~~
Waterluvian
I know you didn't fill out the required forms but I've pre approved you for a
hug.

------
efferifick
Reminds me of the Journal of Universal Rejection.

[http://www.universalrejection.org/](http://www.universalrejection.org/)

~~~
yellowapple
I was wondering why one of the editors' links was already purple despite
having never seen this site before and despite not knowing anything at all
about the editor in question. I inevitably ended up clicking it out of
curiosity.

Well played, Lois A. Butcher-Poffley. Well played.

------
davidlee1435
Hey all,

This is a weekend project that drew inspiration from my own experiences of
getting rejected from various applications. Although I personally haven't
applied this time around, I know the sinking feeling of seeing a rejection
email pop into your inbox and reading the lines "We're sorry to inform you..."
I hope you find this useful and welcome feedback to improve on this.

~~~
genieyclo
FYI your callback link on MailChimp goes to www.rejectionconditioner.com which
has no DNS entry, when it should go to rejectionconditioner.com

~~~
davidlee1435
Good catch! Thanks for the heads up :)

------
derefr
I would like to see a variation on this that

1\. requires you to fill out the YC application form to start the process; and

2\. takes 7-10 days to get back to you with the inevitable rejection.

There's a whole separate psychology involved in getting over the hump of
submitting the application, when you know that not only might you be rejected,
but you'll have to spend a lot of effort to _get_ rejected, and won't find out
whether you have been for quite a while. _That_ , in my mind, is the feeling
you have to "get used to."

(For a bonus, let the applicant respond to the rejection email with special
pleading. Auto-reject that after 7-10 days as well.)

~~~
vnchr
Your MVP could be applying to YC with an intentionally bad idea.

------
Alex3917
This is hilarious. Any chance of expanding this to other institutions? E.g.
maybe you can charge parents $20 a month to send their kids a rejection letter
from Harvard every day.

~~~
davidlee1435
Definitely will work on expanding to other organizations! Universities are
definitely at the top of the list as early admission applications are nearly
due, as well as job/internship application rejections

~~~
Alex3917
The only issue I see with this is that it could affect the delivery of the
actual senders, especially if people get tired of receiving them and start
marking them as spam instead of unsubscribing.

------
aaronaarzelbart
I prefer a straight "You we're not accepted." Rather than all the platitudes
about how you're awesome but everyone is awesome so it's hard to choose from
all the awesome but don't feel too bad etc etc.

I'm a big boy now, just "Sorry you didn't get in." Is less patronizing
somehow.

~~~
jondubois
That seems to be a trick that all these hot startups use to make you think
they actually care about you.

Like how Slack always says stuff along the lines of "we like you" and "I hope
you have a great time at work today" every single time you log in.

Or how npm says "we love your boss" \- Yeah of course you love my boss because
he's the one who's paying for the enterprise license.

In npm's case it's probably more tongue-in-cheek but still, it's a bit
disturbing that these services keep telling me that they love me when in fact
they wouldn't care if I dropped dead tomorrow... Except maybe for the lost
revenue.

~~~
KGIII
"Welcome to Costco. I love you."

------
yesimahuman
As someone who has been rejected from YC after interviewing a few times now,
nothing builds confidence like repeated rejection. I love this. (p.s. you
should build your company anyways, YC isn't God).

~~~
chubs
Re your last point, as Seth Godin says: "Pick yourself" \- I love it!

------
andrewingram
I might clone this and adapt it for break-ups

~~~
huac
Random frequency, "hey...we need to talk" (recipe for heart attack)

------
jamestimmins
This is a really fun, clever idea for a weekend project. I'd be very curious
to hear what your experiences are in a month or so, or after some future
rejection email, to see whether it really conditions you.

It might be interesting to send the email at random times on random days so
you can't get used to it, which I believe is a similar method to how games
will increase your response to rewards by making them irregularly timed.

Either way, nice job!

~~~
davidlee1435
Yeah absolutely! This was based off of a small experiment that I did (albeit
with job rejection letters) over the course of a week, and I felt a lot more
numb to the rejection than I had before. It's anecdotal and only one data
point, but I thought to make a weekend project out of it to get something
shipped.

Re: timing the email, Mailchimp allows you to specify a time range, which I
believe sends the emails at a random time between that time range. I set the
time to between 8AM and 8PM EST, so people should be receiving emails between
that time.

~~~
jamestimmins
Oh that's sweet, so you already have randomness built in.

------
smnscu
It'd be nice to have standard rejection emails from popular companies: Google,
Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, etc.

~~~
CamelCaseName
I have these in my inbox alongside many other rejection letters. It is not
very nice to have.

------
dzink
After 6 real rejections I don't really feel them anymore. This year however we
have a comeback - some really nice growth curves. If needed we plan to reply
back with a beautiful steeply curved chart screenshot. Maybe tweet it?
Autoresponder?

------
7373737373
[http://bureauofcommunication.com/compose/air](http://bureauofcommunication.com/compose/air)

------
franciscop
This is horrible, and beautiful. I love it!

Another way of extending it (besides the suggestions) could be making a
collection of nasty HN comments. Try to match the topics and you might be into
something! Mandatory xkcd reference:
[https://xkcd.com/810/](https://xkcd.com/810/)

~~~
davidlee1435
Thanks for the feedback! I also briefly toyed with the idea of letting users
OAuth in via their Gmail accounts to compile a list of applications that
they've sent in, but I really wanted to get something out quickly.

------
wingerlang
Is it the same every day? I feel you should randomise it a bit.

On the general topic, there is something called "rejection therapy". While I
haven't exactly practiced it myself, I've had my fair share of rejection and I
can definitely feel it is something to try out. Be it social or work-related
things.

------
cableshaft
This needs an equivalent for writers, in response to their query letters. In
my experience, writers are way too sensitive to this and they need to get used
to seeing the rejections before they start submitting (it often cripples them
from even starting to make submissions).

------
dizzystar
In my experience, rejection letters don't ever feel better. I've had plenty.

This also looks like you are doing it wrong. The mass of rejection letters
have many grammar and spelling mistakes. They tend to be poorly written.

I don't even open them. The preview is all the information I need.

------
graycat
How I Learned to Handle Rejection

I got a lot of rejection in grades 1-8. The teachers believed that I was a
poor student. In some ways, I was.

If only from teacher lounge gossip, grade by grade the teachers assumed I was
a poor student.

Then in grades 9-12 I learned my main way to defend myself from rejection:

Main Way: Know what the heck I'm doing, have some solid ways to know I'm
right, and otherwise stay out of sight so that I won't be a target.

So, right, in the 9th grade I discovered high school math. So, I did well: (A)
As some aptitude tests showed, I have some math talent. (B) I found that when
my math was correct, I was 100% immune from criticism or rejection. So, I made
sure my math was correct. It worked great!

Did the same in high school chemistry and physics. Worked great again!

So, when I was right, the teachers were forced to give me credit and just
swallow their surprise, disgust, the evidence that they were wrong about my
work, whatever. They didn't like to swallow that, but they had to and did.

I still couldn't expect to please the English literature teachers so gave up
on them and English literature and settled for grades of gentleman C.

Lesson for Employees: As an employee, the Main Way can be dangerous because
having such solid evidence of being right can be threatening to others. Others
don't like to have swallow that there is solid evidence that they are wrong.
So, as an employee, might have to back off on having such solid evidence; or
if have the evidence, then don't let it be known unless it is needed in some
unusual situation.

In grad school, my department Chair was a straight A, rigid type of guy. His
research wasn't much, but no doubt in courses he made lots of As.

Well, soon he didn't like me. Sorry guy: In a course I found a question, got a
reading course to study it, and in two weeks had a solid solution with a nice,
surprising, new theorem. The work definitely looked publishable and was --
later I published the work with no problems. From then on in grad school, I
had a halo -- could do no wrong. Why? I'd done some rock solid, original
research that any of the faculty members would have been thrilled to have
done. So, the Chair had to swallow.

For entrepreneurship, try to use the Main Way again: So, have some relatively
solid reasons to know you are right.

Next, don't expect anyone in business writing equity checks to accept,
understand, or even consider your solid reasons. Why not: Because in all their
experience, they've nearly never seen or at least have never accepted any
solid reasons as relevant.

Elsewhere in our civilization, such solid reasons are both necessary and
nearly sufficient.

E.g., at one time before spy satellites, the US wanted an airplane that would
fly about 2000 miles without refueling across the USSR high enough (80,000+
feet) and fast enough (Mach 3+) not to get shot down and take lots of high
resolution pictures. So, Kelly Johnson at Lockheed's Skunk Works came to the
CIA with an armload of blueprints of solid reasons. He was right, and he,
Lockheed, and the CIA all knew he was right. The result was the SR-71, as at

[http://iliketowastemytime.com/sites/default/files/sr71_black...](http://iliketowastemytime.com/sites/default/files/sr71_blackbird_leaking_fuel_cell19.jpg)

and it worked just as planned and never got shot down. No doubt.

Same for GPS and a lot of other US national security projects.

Indeed, given the solid presentations on paper, nearly always the rest of the
projects were low risk and high payoff.

So, for entrepreneurship, use the Main Way. As Kelly Johnson did, have some
solid reasons to know you are right.

Then accept that none of the equity funders will pay any attention at all to
your solid evidence.

So, then, also, you should pay no serious attention to their rejections.
Bluntly, they don't know what the heck they are doing. Instead, they are
essentially just throwing darts, in a poorly lit bar, after several beers, and
occasionally hit the bull's eye.

And there's a much bigger reason to f'get about the equity funders: It has
become fully clear that for a successful project, say, building another
Google, that the equity funders have no idea at all just how to do that. E.g.,
it happens only about once each 10 years, and to the equity funders it's all
just luck and never by solid design like the SR-71.

So, if your project could be as successful as Google, or even worth $10+ B,
then you have to accept that none of the equity funders have even as much as a
weak little hollow hint of a tiny clue how to do that or how evaluate your
project to do that. So, their rejection means nothing very solid about your
project, is just noise from incompetents.

"Incompetents"? Sure: Could count with shoes on all the information technology
VCs (bio-medial VCs are commonly very different) who are qualified for a
technical slot in a startup, for CTO or CIO, for a tenure track slot in a STEM
field in a good research university, for an NSF grant, as an NSF problem
sponsor, who as sole author have published a STEM field research paper in a
good journal, etc. Bluntly, in technology, they incompetent. So, their opinion
or rejection of a technology project means no more than the outcome of a dice
roll.

So, pick a project you can bring to nice profitability with just your own
checkbook, and then do that. Millions of US Main Street businesses -- auto
repair, auto body repair, grass mowing, pizza carry-out, etc. -- do that and
where there is more capex then needed for, say, a first Web server and router.

~~~
weston
Incredible story, thanks!

------
osullivj
Suggest a tweaked version that sends rejections from major publishing houses
to aspiring novelists.

------
afshinmeh
Hmm, this is a nightmare. Why would I expect to receive a "Rejection Email"
everyday in order to improve myself or accept a fact in real life?

This looks like a email collecting tool. No Privacy Policy, no Terms page. A
giant input box to add email to a Mailchimp list?

------
Grustaf
This is wonderful! And the best thing is that a freemium model immediately
suggests itself, for a fee we can receive personalised rejection letters for
the case if we would get to interviews. I feel that’s when we need this
service the most.

------
thisisit
The formatting makes it difficult to read the message you are trying to
convey.

------
xxjackyxx9
So many people fall in love with this idea. I just can't believe it.

~~~
xxjackyxx9
If you don't feel the pain of rejection, how would you want to chage your
action for a better outcome? Desensitized of rejection doesn't mean you need
to actively seek for rejection, right? It will only make you feel like a loser
and okay with that.

------
SherlockeHolmes
I don't think the conditioning process advised here is sound if considering
the subject's psychological health.

------
halite
Or you can just use a monthly reminder in Google Calendar. Update this
reminder with all the rejections you receive.

------
thegigaraptor
I would like to see this applied to a dating app. Some people turn into
complete monsters when faced with rejection.

------
Hendrixer
This is amazing

------
Danilka
OMG, what a dumb idea!

How about receiving acceptance emails? Am I the only one to think that
positive reinforcement is a way better tool? How would it possibly help you to
tune yourself to a negative outcome on daily basis?!

~~~
keithwhor
Hate to break it to you, but the most frequent phrase you hear as a founding
CEO is "no." Often masked as positive feedback, which is the real one-two
punch to the gut. Yes, positive outlooks are a _requirement_ but you're going
to get "no" conditioning training at some point.

You calling this a dumb idea is a perfect example, so I'm sure the creators
here thank you for that!

~~~
erichurkman
Or the 'california no': "yes, but now isn't the right time [and will never
be]" or "no, not today [nor tomorrow, nor ever]". Gives you false hope for no
reason.

