
Why I'm frustrated that I wasn't accepted into Y Combinator. - cirroc
http://www.scribd.com/doc/30644/Why-Im-frustrated-that-I-wasnt-accepted-into-Ycombinator
======
mattjaynes
From my notes of PG's talk on Wednesday:

12\. There are 2 kinds of judgments: Admissions and Grades If you get a bad
grade in a class, but think you did a great job, then you feel entitled to go
and talk to the teacher and challenge the decision. On the other hand, that
entitlement feeling isn't present if you apply to a college and get denied.
This is because in admissions there are a limited number of seats available
and a cutoff point at which no more people can be accepted. Like in the
olympic tryouts - the top X% of swimmers for a country may get to go to the
games, but those below that threshold don't get to go. It's not much different
in getting funding - you can just slide off the edge and just not make the
'admission'. When I was rejected by Harvard I thought I sucked. Now I see it
as laughable. Have you ever been to the admissions office? A rejection in an
admissions scenario is not necessarily a reflection on you. At YCombinator we
go through and rank all of the applications, then we take the top 30 for
interviews. Recently we looked at some of our early teams and compared how
they are doing now with how we rated them in the application process. It was
scary! One of our most successful teams was at number 30! Just one more down
and they would have missed the cutoff.

~~~
ced
So all this talk about accepting "any team good enough" applies only for
funding, and not the interviews?

That would mean, incidentally, that anyone who was rejected this round might
have been accepted in the last, or might be accepted in the next one.

~~~
mattjaynes
I've been following YC fairly closely since their start and have never come
across anything that gave the impression that they would accept "any team good
enough". Think about it - they have very limited resources - particularly of
time, and there is just no way they could take on every team "good enough"
unless they grew their staff and created a large investment organization,
which is not what they're trying to do. Even big VC's and angels don't accept
"any team good enough" - they just don't have the time and it wouldn't make
sense for them to spread themselves so thin.

You said: "That would mean, incidentally, that anyone who was rejected this
round might have been accepted in the last, or might be accepted in the next
one."

Yes, that is exactly right according to what Paul said.

------
jkush
The best advice I can give is this: give yourself until the end of the week to
mourn. Be depressed about it. In fact, be REALLY depressed about it. Don't
sugarcoat it, let it sink all the way in. Get all that negativity and
depression out of your system.

On Monday, pick yourself up and work with what you've got. You've got lots of
opportunities. Find out what they are and use them to their fullest. Don't let
being "rejected" beat you. Give yourself time to grieve then move one.

It's what you're going to do anyway. Just shorten the cycle.

~~~
dfranke
Screw that. I have better uses for my time than stages of grief. Five hours
after I got rejected I took a job with another Cambridge startup, with enough
equity for a chance at getting rich.

~~~
jkush
I'm with ya dfranke. I picked it back up pretty fast too. My point is that we
all pick it back up eventually. Some (like you) don't even waste time feeling
bad, you get right back to it. Others don't. My point is that if you do feel
bad, fine. Feel bad and move on. You're going to move on eventually, so just
do it quicker.

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yaacovtp
Sad, go back and read the second half of the first paragraph of the email you
received. Do you realize the odds of getting into Harvard are better then
getting an interview with YC and even then only about a third are accepted.
Not having an extra 15K in the bank never stopped anyone from launching a
startup.

I bet that more startups are started because of groups applying to YC. It's a
good thing you applied, but move on already. My partner and I don't need the
money. We applied more for the mentoring and camaraderie one gets spending
time in a group setting. Instead of YC we're tapping the locals here in NYC,
online and anyone else we can think of to bounce ideas off of, test our
application and help get the word out once we've launched.

Go, work, launch. Let me know when you do.

~~~
mattculbreth
This is a good point, and there are some of us in Atlanta meeting next week.
We've met purely as a result of being in this group.

------
abstractbill
I can sympathise. I think my fiancee put it best though, when she asked me "Do
you want to turn out like Uncle Rico, always moaning about how life could have
been if only coach had put you in the game?"

------
gyro_robo
Y Combinator picked Pollground.

And one of their best-performing picks currently was their thirtieth and last
pick of the 30 "most promising" they invited for interviews that round -- if
they had assigned it #31, it would have gotten axed. One can infer from this
that some who missed the cut would likely do better than some who made it.

The low-hanging web 2.0 fruit may be harvested soon, in which case they would
have to expand into other types of ventures.

Also, there are some technologies that are vital but don't make good start-
ups. Work done on the Linux kernel (including virtualization); Compiz/Beryl;
PostGreSQL; and so forth. The complexity may be an order of magnitude greater
than doing a website, but you can't sell ads in Xen source code.

YC's modus operandi also rules out start-ups that need more time and/or
capital. In short, they are pursuing a specific niche.

Don't be discouraged -- their validation is orthogonal to whether your work is
technically novel or highly profitable.

------
zaidf
Man, if this has been your greatest challenge and biggest disappointment to
date, get ready for the journey ahead!

One lesson I have learned over the years from disappointments is never to get
too attached or confident when applying for something. I felt we had a very
strong application but I always know there is decent chance we won't get
accepted and it would have little to do with the quality of our idea or
product--communication and bad luck, may be.

------
BitGeek
Ok, you're working on this in your spare time. Good, that's a good plan.
You're working day jobs, and then in the evenings you're working on your
startup.

That's all well and good, but where's your cocaine habit? How are you blowing
all your money if you're spending all your time at work or on the startup?

IF you're not blowing all your moeny, and you've spent a year looking for
funding (like it sounds like) then why dont' you have a year's worth of living
expenses saved up?

The problem here is hte pervasive idea that the first step to starting a
company is getting someone else to fund it. Screw that-- nobody can ever know
your business as well as you can. You can use advice, sure, but wasting months
working on proposals-- getting seeking emotional validation from investment,
this is all the wrong way to go about it.

Build your product, save your cash. When you have enough money saved up, and
if you really believe in your predictions (That you'll be cash flow positive
in 6 months) then you quit your jobs when you have $12,000 saved up, or less.

If you can't save $12,000 between now and the next YC funding round, and
you're working full time, then you are spending your money on something--
cocaine, maybe?

IF your idea and team really are good, you shouldn't be desperate for money...
and hinging your emotional well being, or self confidence, on validation from
investors is a recipe for failure (and unhappiness.)

------
jsjenkins168
No one has gotten accepted into YC this round yet. For those that got the
interview, they are facing the hardest part now. You feel cheated for getting
an email, imagine how 2/3 of those who fly in for the interview will feel when
they get a call Sunday night telling them they are rejected. I will personally
be crushed if we're in that 2/3. But at the same time I know we have
potentially a great idea that we can run with regardless of what YC's opinion
is about us.

If you think you have a great idea that users will actually want, get up on
your feed and go run with it.

------
aston
I can tell you've got a ton of emotion behind this post. Hopefully writing it
all down helped put it all into perspective.

Not getting YC funding is definitely not the end of the world. There are a ton
of reasons why you might not have gotten funding, and many of them aren't
really related to how great a hacker/startupper you might be.

There are plenty of folks around here who are going to press on despite the
setback [2]. No matter what you do, you're going to run into roadblocks, and
part of being successful is getting past them without losing heart. Don't give
up now, and good luck in the future.

[1] <http://onstartups.com/home/tabid/3339/bid/1350/Why-Not-All-Great-
Hackepreneurs-Get-Picked-By-Y-Combinator.aspx>

[2] <http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=11551>

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Tichy
Cry me a river... I don't get it, why do you need these external motivators?
If you are so good, why can't you get your project off the ground by yourself?
The trick is to not beg for approval, you want to have the investors begging
you to take their investment. Or so I think... but seriously, it sounds like
you have been rejected three times, that is nothing. Think about dating -
would self-pity and begging win you the favours of any girl? If everybody gave
up after three rejections, humans would be extinct by now.

If you are so creative, why can't you find other ways to raise money? Besides,
I think if you apply for YC you don't really need money (because surely you
could get 15000$ somehow), it is all about the experience, right? If you build
your startup anyway, it will be exciting and interesting, too. Who knows, next
year YC might invite you as a speaker.

~~~
randallsquared
"because surely you could get 15000$ somehow"

I think you live in a different world than some of the rest of us. Not only is
15K a lot of money (more than half of what my wife and I made last year, and
we're not doing badly here in east Alabama), but it's often the case that the
only people who could possibly get that kind of money are friends and family
who've already paid for most or all of a house. So, the question becomes,
would you rather work on this part time, or try to convince your parents or
friends to bet their home on your startup?

~~~
snowmaker
No offense intended, but if you want to start a startup, the first thing you
should do is get the hell out of Alabama. In Silicon Valley, you can raise 15K
by just asking for it.

~~~
theoutlander
LOL ... so I am based in Seattle ... does it make sense for me to move to the
bay area ?

~~~
BitGeek
Seattle is the third best startup hub, behind SF Bay and Boston and ahead of
New York.

Zero reason to move to the bay area if you're in seattle... and a lot of
reasons not to.

~~~
theoutlander
Oh, this should really email me when someone replies to my post ... so I have
been thinking about it a lot ... and it seems like SF Bay is the preferred
location ... I guess I should get out of Redmond and into Seattle ....

------
menloparkbum
"We developed a strategy for reinvigorating Adventure Games- Making them sell
when they never had before."

~~~
yaacovtp
Yeah, I was going to go there too (update: Making them sell when they never
had before."), but didn't want to say the obvious.

~~~
mynameishere
"go where?" I don't get it.

At any rate, failure is a part of business. Think of a store owner: He sits
and watches people enter and exit all day long without buying anything.
Failure, failure, failure. If you can't stomach it, then _that_ is your real
problem, not what PG thinks--remember that PG has his prejudices when it comes
to technology, and I don't think he likes games very much.

------
mukund
Getting frustrated for small things? First thing is one must understand that
they may be better plans and ideas by better people. The assumptions that my
idea is the best is the cause of these problems. When one is passionate about
one's stuff, a slight rejection of that angers one. If one things that his/her
own stuff is the best then why not be confident enough to keep working on that
and may be who knows that D-day will come when you will be recognized.

------
mattculbreth
Keep your head up man, it's all good. YC said in the email that it's an error-
prone process. I know of at least one blunder they made. :)

~~~
theoutlander
So do I :)

------
theoutlander
What VC's or YC say is not the ultimate ...if you have a great idea, it will
succeed if you execute it right! If you are that into YC, you should apply
again... Obviously, these guys cannot accept everyone, so they had to find
some reason here and there to eliminate people ...

------
marketer
Up to this point most college-aged kids have followed a clearly defined path:
do well in school, go to college, etc.. Paul has structured YC so it's an easy
and well structured method of doing a startup, but it's definitely not the
only way to go.

------
gibsonf1
Maybe the issue is that YC is not funding stand-alone games but focusing on
web technologies which would mean it has nothing to do with the merits of your
plan. (Is the game web-based?)

------
whacked_new
I'm actually most impressed by the line in the essay, pg's "why not to start a
startup" pushed your cofounder over the edge.

------
timg
summary:

Tease investors suck the life out of startups.

~~~
mattjaynes
Actually, the summary should be:

"Tease investors (cough, in this definition _all_ investors) suck the life out
of WEAK startups."

Startups that really have any potential will not be phased by a trivial
'setback' like this.

From my notes on pg's talk the other day:

Some founders approach investors as if they are asking for permission to start
a company. That is very much the wrong approach. You need to make it clear
that the train is leaving and if they want to be on it, they better get on.
That being said, you have to mean it 100%, because if you don't, they'll be
able to tell. A good way to mean it 100% is to have a solid backup plan. What
also helps is to start cheap and avoid doing the expensive things till later
so you don't _need_ the investment, but can get real momentum going for your
company.

You're startup needs to be like a cockroach - hard to kill, even after a
nuclear war. Don't be a delicate beautiful flower, be a cockroach.

------
vlad
I'm half asleep right now..

The word on the street is that adventure games are the next big thing in
casual games. Not sudoku, or bejeweled. Casual gamers expect more these days.
Adventure games are also much harder and take much more time to clone.
Finally, you could sell level packs to your customers once your actual product
is done, something that you can't do for games with random levels. I think
between your web site and the main portals (RealArcade, BigFishGames, Oberon)
and your own web site you can start your own niche. Just make sure you can
partner with somebody who can create great art, quickly. However, the kind of
companies PG wants for YC are ones that can have a reasonable demo after just
three months of work, and also those that he knows enough about that he can
actually contribute to. In other words, there are millions of things in the
digital world one could make money off, but PG (like everybody else) is
interested in a subset of them, and no investor who wants to be involved with
a project will choose one where you'll be in the corner working on your own
thing and he will only play a small role in the fun. (I wouldn't be surprised
if helping startups from scratch IS like an adventure game to PG.)

And, actually, Yahoo! could actually buy you considering they are one of the
top places for selling casual games. BigFishGames bought a developer in Europe
after he came out with 2 or 3 hit games within 1 year, and called it
BigFishGames Europe. In other words, the portals are buying developers who can
actually create a quality game on a low budget, quickly and repeatedly. When
they own the developer, they can put it on the front page and make a lot more
profit, such as BigFishGames is doing with their Mystery series of games. But,
some people have made a decent living (not millionaires, but livable).

If you want to create adventure games that use the mouse that are easy to get
into and want to make about $8-$10 per sale on the portals and about $18 on
your web site, go for it. Those are the kinds of games that people want which
are also hard to clone, and hard to find a free flash game online to replace.
You also have the advantage of creating some IP (character, names, trademarks)
to use later, which is hard to do if you're just creating Bejeweled (and for
which games will easily find flash games if they don't want to pay for the
real versions.)

So, go for it, as long as you are focusing on creating an actual game as soon
as possible, and not spending the next 10 months developing a framework for
your future game, because that is pointless. Aveyond is not an adventure game
but more like an RPG, but it was a good seller (supposedly) and made in Game
Maker (which also supports old-school one-screen-at-a-time adventure games.)
Just create some kind of an adventure game where you own the IP using Game
Maker, then after you are a big success you can port it to XBOX 360 or the
Mac. The key is to create a game, not a game framework.

