

Tell HN: If you haven't got your YC email, check your Spam folder - gruseom

My partner phoned me on receiving a YC response email. I was surprised, not having seen mine yet - but actually it was in my Spam folder in Gmail. Since I might not have seen it for a while otherwise, I thought this information might be helpful to others.
======
jchor
We applied during the last cycle and didn't get accepted. We forged ahead
(Were doing this regardless if we are a part of YC or not), started
prototyping, networking, and solidified our business vision and plan.

We applied again this cycle and got accepted for an interview. Our YC
application has changed a bit since we now have a much more focused direction,
but our technology stack has been pretty much the same from day one.

I hope that this can be an encouragement to those of you who didn't get it
this time, but I'm sure that if you try again you can only increase your
chances. BTW, last time we applied we did it fairly last minute and I missed
an email from pg asking us some questions. This time, we applied a month in
advance and I checked my YC mail daily so I wouldn't make that mistake again.
And yes, he did email us some questions again but this time I replied on time.
=).

------
bigthboy
GMail > PG?

Fail :P

oh well, onward and upward I suppose, can't let something like this knock you
down. Like it was said many many times. Everyone who didn't make it, please,
by all means, keep moving forward because this is not a death certificate.

~~~
pg
_Like it was said many many times. Everyone who didn't make it, please, by all
means, keep moving forward because this is not a death certificate._

This is an important point. I would hate to think that we might be
discouraging any of the startups we didn't invite to interviews. It's not just
to make people feel better that we talk in the "no" email about how bad we are
at judging startups. It's really true. The single biggest topic of
conversation within YC is how we can get better at it.

In fact, as we often find ourselves saying to YC-funded startups when they're
looking for their next round, practically all investors suck at judging
startups. But we probably do worse than most, because we have to judge so many
based on so little information.

~~~
erik
Can you share any examples of startups that you regret saying no to?

~~~
pg
I haven't gone looking for specific companies we missed, but there must be
some by now considering that we've read thousands of applications and only
funded 102 of them.

If startups funded by "YC clones" succeed, those are probably ones we missed,
since most people who apply to them apply to us too.

------
arthurw
Guys, remember, Ycombinator is a great resource but you'll see that some of
the ventures they've backed are either completely stupid, already invented by
google or simply not existing today because even they failed. Ycombinator
seems to be seeking a very specific set of ideas and type of team. My personal
opinion is that this lack of diversity in type of ideas and teams doesn't
contribute much to the growth of their endeavor. Why just programmers? The
real value is in the vision and outsourcing is easier than ever today.
Overall, keep at it! I guarantee that many of the ventures Ycombinator didn't
accept are going to do well. Good luck.

~~~
tdavis
This is silly. And by silly I mean moronic. You can't outsource an entire
start-up, especially without more than $15,000. Hell, we couldn't manage to
successfully get a Wordpress template created _when we supplied a full PSD and
offered $300 for it_. Talk about epic goddamn fail.

You realize the whole "Clone Amazon for me, $100-500" thing doesn't actually
work, right? And look at the last batch of YC companies, will you? There's a
lot of diversity there.

Maybe the only thing you got right here is that some of the start-ups YC
doesn't fund will likely go on to succeed. Since YC themselves admit that, it
wasn't much of a point though, was it?

~~~
arthurw
I definitely see your point and by no means am I advocating for your typical
"send it to China or India for $100" gig. My point is that if you are not a
programmer and trying to enter this arena, it's not the end of the world. The
value is in your idea, your ability to network, market yourself and create a
solid team with well-rounded skills.

Ycombinator definitely has some diverse ideas many of which are fantastic.
Like any start-up catalyst, sure, they have backed some ideas that have
already been out there to some degree or are no longer around--but that is
totally to be expected. There will always be some overlap and like any regular
distribution bell curve will show us, some will fail, some will surpass our
expectations and rest will be in the middle. I have a great deal of respect
for all that Ycombinator does and the people involved. Good luck guys!

------
honeyman
It is the 30-th already, and neither from our team got any response yet
(anyone else haven't got a response till now too? Or is that we so unlucky?).
Checked in the trash folder, under the subfolders, and in the outbox (just to
be sure). My ISP will kill me for DDOSing their IMAP.

Of course, we won't stop our project if not invited by Paul-and-the-team.
Together with Y, or separately, we'll keep working on it, and, as every self-
confident startupper does, we truly believe into it and are sure that it will
hit the Web, gain several billions and finally takeover both Google and Apple,
so that every investor-who-ignored-us will kick themselves thinking of missed
profit...

... but holy, where is that email?

~~~
bporterfield
I'm still waiting on a response too...maybe it's some kind of YC startup
challenge; none of the undecideds get notified, and the team that handles the
pressure the best gets the final spot!

~~~
honeyman
Or is that a challenge of self-sufficiency in an ICFPC style? "Claiming you
are a hacker but crying you haven't received a response? Come to our server
and _get_ your response _yourself_!"

~~~
ram1024
okay, we've got 1 spot left but i'm tired of sifting through these entries.
let's cagematch the remaining 50 groups and see who's left standing...

should have done that from the beginning IMHO. i fight dirty

~~~
bporterfield
Ok, but all jokes aside, we're still waiting for an email :(. I might have
made a mistake, but I'm pretty sure I triple-checked my email address in the
application, and I also have it in my profile. I know my application was
submitted, since I received a question from pg himself.

Maybe something went awry with the mail script? I don't want to assume one way
or another until I get an actual response...All I know is that productivity is
going to suffer today! Is anyone else still waiting?

Perhaps providing responses through the HN profile could be a good fix to this
problem and the spam folder issue for future cycles?

~~~
ram1024
my mail is terribly unreliable, but my co-founder got our rejection letter,
just now managed to forward it to me :D

wanted to see me sweat, obviously

~~~
bporterfield
honeyman, is your group still waiting on a response? Am I the only one left
that can't find a response email?

~~~
honeyman
Yep, still waiting. I am slightly worried that something is wrongs with us in
general, cause seems that everybody here received a question or two from PG
:). We haven't.

Either we were incredibly clear (having sent out the form long before the
deadline and tweaked it numerously since then), or they just tired of reading
our form, which slightly (but intentionally) breaks the "200 word" request
almost everywhere.

Hard to fit into 200 words, when you have almost everything in mind preplanned
and thought, from the scalability-related technical questions and repayment
strategy, up to the image-creating plans...

~~~
callmeed
Still nothing here, either ... so don't feel alone.

~~~
honeyman
Tired of waiting, wrote them directly, got a reply promptly... and joining the
"Waiting for another lucky chance" team :) They told me that my email was
issued out on Wednesday; so probably it was some mail fault why it haven't
arrived before.

------
mct
Recently, I've been amused that gmail has been marking my Google Alert emails
as spam. Screenshot: <http://tinyurl.com/5v7c6w>

------
markbao
In IRC:

    
    
      <frisco> lol, didn't pg invent that spam filter?
    

(Didn't quite invent it, but <http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html>)

~~~
SwellJoe
According to a conversation I had with Paul Buchheit (paul here at HN) in the
past, GMail spam filters are heavily reputation based, which leads me to
believe that Bayesian filtering is not a first line of defense, and likely
would be specific to each mailbox rather than universally applied. So, if it's
happening to everyone, then it's a universal rule at GMail that's doing the
filtering, and thus I would guess not heavily based on any Bayesian results.
But I might be wrong, GMail spam filtering may have changed dramatically since
paul worked on the project, or I may have simply misunderstood his
explanation.

But pg did invent the most powerful recent spam fighting technique. I'm not
sure why one would say the description provided in the essay isn't the same as
inventing it? Certainly Bayesian analysis existed long before the essay, but I
think it's safe to say that the inventor of the airplane was no less its
inventor because the internal combustion engine existed before.

~~~
aidanf
"But pg did invent the most powerful recent spam fighting technique. "

While it may be the case that PGs essay was many peoples first exposure to
baysian spam filters, he didn't invent the technique.

The first time I heard of it was in a paper published in 1998 at Microsoft
research. This predates 'A plan for spam' by 4 years.
<http://research.microsoft.com/~horvitz/junkfilter.htm>

~~~
SwellJoe
I think I knew about that and completely forgot about it.

I just don't pay as much attention to the spam problem as I once did a few
years ago--it seems to be reasonably solved for me. I got over 600 spam
messages to my primary address yesterday, and only 3 made it to my
mailbox...and all I do is run SpamAssassin with almost entirely default
settings and auto-white/black listing (which is Bayesian). Now, the primary
things that motivate me are making the system more efficient with regard to
resource usage, rather than more effective (though being more effective is
also good). Some of our customers still seem to have problems, but I've not
really figured out why SpamAssassin works so poorly for them and so well for
me.

------
greg_helfer
How many applicants received any questions on their proposals from YC before
tonight?

~~~
tectonic
We did (excitement!) get an interview and we did get a question, so YRMV.

~~~
bigthboy
Congratulations!

------
hooande
I wonder if people are flagging YC rejection emails as spam out of spite.

------
rigga_sconi
1) how many applications did they receive ? 2) and how many did they accept ?
3) weve edited the application a lot of times since July. I understand that
they started reading them before application deadline. could they have read an
older version of our application ? 4) since Google is God, its good is
infinite. Hence I assume GMail marked the mail as spam to protect me from
feeling rejected, 'cause shit was already happening today since I woke up.

------
staunch
What's the rejection email look like? Just a one liner or an explanation about
how "it's not you, its me"? :-)

~~~
chip
\--- We're sorry to say we couldn't accept your proposal for funding. Please
don't take it personally. Despite the stock market crash we got a record
number of applications this time, and the average quality was high. And since
there's a limit on the number of interviews we can do, we had to turn away a
lot of genuinely promising groups.

Another reason you shouldn't take this personally is that we know we make lots
of mistakes. It's alarming how often the last group to make it over the
threshold for interviews ends up being one that we fund. That means there are
surely other good groups that fall just below the threshold and that we miss
even interviewing. We're trying to get better at this, but it's practically
certain that groups we rejected will go on to create successful startups. If
you do, we'd appreciate it if you'd send us an email telling us about it; we
want to learn from our mistakes.

Y Combinator Staff

~~~
prakash
That's probably one of the nicest and most humble rejection emails.

------
charlesju
Mine was in spam too

------
jchor
Thanks! Same here, mine was in my GMail spam folder.

------
polvi
spam for me too! thanks for pointing this out.

------
auston
What does the rejection email say?

------
kwamenum86
gmail marked it as spam

------
ram1024
anyone know if they just mail the main applicant or do they send a mail to
each of the group members? my email is a tad unreliable and i hadn't heard
back about my app.

~~~
bporterfield
Only the main applicant will be contacted. I'm waiting on mine too! Is anyone
else that applied still waiting for a response?

~~~
morphle
Yes, also waiting for a response. My best wishes to those who didn't make the
cut, you know you'll succeed anyway!.

------
lindo_rohan
I didn't get any response from YC as off yet :(

------
cbrinker
REJECTED! _KILLS SELF_

Naw it's coo-. I was kind of hoping I would get rejected since I've had second
thoughts about someone owning 5% of my idea since I applied a few months back.

Hope the lucky winners blow apart the interwebz 2.5 with some crazy new
productive ideas.

~~~
tlrobinson
If your application read anything like this comment I think I know why you got
rejected.

~~~
cbrinker
If you read anything like your application I think I know why you're rejected
by life.

~~~
tdavis
Jesus christ, this isn't 4chan.

~~~
cbrinker
Should be half the time.

~~~
icey
_This_ is why PG likes to know usernames during the the funding cycle.

