
I Got Rejected by Y Combinator So I’m building my own Incubator - minasmarios
https://medium.com/univation/i-got-rejected-by-y-combinator-so-im-building-my-own-incubator-546b4e72e418
======
adamlangsner
Some of the feedback here is a little harsh. This kid applied for YC when he
was 18 and now he's only 20 years old. I wish I had launched something and had
it fail when I was 18. When I was 18 I wasn't even finishing my software
projects. It wasn't until a few years later that I would launch something, it
fail and I'd realize I need to re-evaluate my approach.

He's young and making mistakes, but if he operates on a long time horizon I
think he's doing pretty good. He realizes the he needs to research a market
before creating a product (customers own the problem, you own the solution).

His mistake here is that he's angry about YC (which is unjustified, they were
right to deny him) so he wants to make an "incubator". That's probably not a
good idea, but he's only 20 so has plenty of time to fail more.

I think he knows what to do though. Research an idea first before building.
So, the smart thing to do would be to find a vertical that intrigues him and
start engaging with people in that industry trying to identify problems they
may they need solving. B2B (specifically B2SmallB) is always easier than B2C
for a solo founder.

~~~
mvid
I personally think the criticisms are too polite, not direct enough. It’s fine
if a person spends time trying and failing _on their own_ , but this person’s
idea is explicitly to influence other people, knowingly, with no experience or
reputation. The targets are the most inexperienced, naive, passionate
candidates.

It’s likely that the absence of a project like this, led by a person with zero
or possibly negative experience, would be better.

------
PragmaticPulp
If I understand this correctly, the author was rejected from YC, failed to get
any customer interest for his own startup, so he’s pivoting to running
Hackathons in Universities as an incubator.

> Univation is the way to change the process and implement the above-listed
> solutions. An incubator program, for Universities, to let Student Founders
> start 1) on an already developed idea and 2) make them into teams.

This sounds like any other themed Hackathon event without pre-formed teams. My
concern is that he doesn’t mention what, if any, financial interest he takes
in their output.

If he’s simply coordinating students with experts in a mentoring environment
for fun and learning, that’s great.

If he’s taking advantage of students to do work on other people’s (“experts”)
ideas and keeping large portions of the equity for himself and experts, that’s
not so great.

Until we have the details, I’m skeptical. I’ve seen a lot of great things come
out of university entrepreneurship programs, but there are constantly sharks
in the water around enterprising college students. If you find yourself
approached by one of these programs, make sure to find an external mentor
without a financial interest who can provide some guidance and review terms
for you.

------
anticonformist
I'd recommend you abandon this idea. What attracts most people to YC is money,
connections, and advice. It doesn't sound like you're in a position to offer
these things.

If you need help figuring out to work on, Startup School is a good option.
Reading Paul Graham's essays on ideas should help. His advice is not all
applicable to people outside his bubble but his advice on ideas is excellent.

Choosing the idea is the most critical thing you will do. The difference
between an idea that seems good and one that is actually good can be very
difficult to determine. Sometimes the easiest thing to do is to launch
multiple projects and see which gets traction. In any case, the ability to
iterate on multiple projects and then multiple versions is a hugely powerful
ability.

I'd recommend you focus on solving some problems you have experienced
personally. Want a GIF meme generator for your Discord channel? Do that. Or
anything regardless of how trivial it is but just focus on making it grow.
Worry about the financial aspects after you have learned how to make something
succeed. Maybe you will find that your project can't be easily monetized but
at least you will learn what market success feels like for the next project.
Or you can decide to do only things that might have a good financial outcome,
that could work too, but it still would be very good to solve a problem you
have experienced.

[http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html)

[http://paulgraham.com/ideas.html](http://paulgraham.com/ideas.html)

[https://www.ycombinator.com/resources/](https://www.ycombinator.com/resources/)

------
rabidrat
Does it make sense to build an Incubator if you haven't built any kind of
company yet?

~~~
mvid
I was going to say... he got rejected by YC (and YC turned out to be 100%
correct), started one business that had the least possible success, somehow
made a lot of assumptions about business success after that, and now is
starting a program to mentor others?

At least it doesn’t really sound like an actual incubator, it’s more of a
school club for people with startup interest. Unlike a real incubator where
you get something like space or money, this is basically just a mailing list.
The members get nothing but also basically invest nothing.

~~~
ironmagma
The act of building something with peers is far from nothing. Having a space
to experiment and create is in itself pretty useful and does require some
overhead, so there is value being added. Of course it depends on what level of
oversight is provided/required that will determine how good it is.

------
Kalium
A man who runs an incubator in Portland once told me that anyone can run an
incubator one year. Almost anyone can run it two years. It's years three and
beyond that make all the difference.

With that in mind, I'm exciting to see where this incubator is in 2023!

------
enonevets
I remember someone did this before and went searching and found them:
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2011/04/11/start-
ups...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2011/04/11/start-ups-rejected-
by-y-combinator-and-investors-flock-to-yc-rejects/#623988f56c16)

Ran across this one as well while searching:
[https://www.producthunt.com/posts/yc-
rejects](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/yc-rejects)

------
dnautics
This could work.

I regularly see incubators (including yc, but the worst offenders are e.g.
indie bio) pick ideas that are actually physically/scientifically/practically
impossible, or socially difficult with no plan to solve it. And the proxy that
is used to select them/reject other candidates is 'team'. PG even says that
the most important criterion is team.

Of course, this is not necessarily a poor model for an incubator, as, if
you're someone that can hoodwink an incubator into buying into snake oil with
your personality, you're likely to be able to hoodwink the next round of
investors, or better yet, all the way to an exit. Greater fools theory and all
that.

I wouldn't be surprised if those running incubators know this and therefore
don't bother with more than cursory due diligence as the next round will
assume early due diligence was done/"the correct pivot was/would've been
chosen due to mentor input", due to the power of social validation. The
incentives are not correctly aligned, anyway.

I wonder if this harebrained idea might actually have a shot at breaking the
diligence problem.

------
flyGuyOnTheSly
Sounds like you built it out of spite?

And you have little to no experience running startups?

This should go over well...

~~~
hckr_news
Spite incubator...a la Larry David

[https://youtu.be/P2k0VFX1FUw](https://youtu.be/P2k0VFX1FUw)

------
marcinzm
I get people who succeeded preaching their view on what made them succeed
(even if it often mis-attributes luck to spurious factors). But what is the
recent trend of people who haven't even succeeded in their field preaching
about what it takes to succeed and being listened to? Youtube videos, that
coding career book that was posted here recently, this incubator, etc. I mean,
I get the Dunning-Kruger effect as to why they preach but why are people
paying so much attention to them?

~~~
mvid
I remember seeing it a lot with the “digital nomad” scene. People would try
some bottom of the barrel business like drop shipping, fail or eke out a
living in some much cheaper country, and then realize that most of the money
to be made was being a personality and selling guides to other experience-
less, aspiring DNs.

Realistically, people who were good at the actual business side wouldn’t give
the special sauce away.

------
raltok
Hi everyone,

We’re launching a live course on software startup formation with Shawn Kung,
Venture Partner at AV8 Ventures, a VC firm based in Silicon Valley. He’s also
an angel investor at Y Combinator Demo Day as well as a Stanford Lecturer. The
course includes:

\- 6 weekly live lectures with Shawn and all the other students (2h each)

\- Guest speakers (founders & investors from Shawn’s network)

\- 1-1 office hours

\- Unlimited Q&A on the course private Slack channel

\- Startup mini project where students will form teams and pitch a business
idea to Shawn

\- Lifetime access to Shawn’s Slack channel & private LinkedIn group for
alumni

We are 75% full. Class is capped at 50 students. The live course will kick off
on July 23. Schedule for the lectures is 5-7pm PT.

Link: [https://flatwyse.com/venture-startup-
formation](https://flatwyse.com/venture-startup-formation)

------
gridlockd
_" Of course, it may seem like a copy of the Havenly or decorators.com model.
But I was in love with the idea so nothing stopped me to make it real."_

Rookie mistake.

------
kanobo
This is a classic chicken and egg dilemma. Can an egg incubate other eggs
before it's a chicken?

~~~
ironmagma
True, and if you think about it, the answer is decidedly ‘yes.’ Humans are
capable of building up almost any skill or craft from scratch, from a new
language to teaching yourself guitar to independently inventing portions of
math.

