

Ask HN: What is Y Combinator's 'anti-portfolio' like - FreeRadical

Does anyone have examples of start-ups that didn't get into YC but have gone on to do 'well' by some definition(e.g top 100,000 on compete.com or ramen profitable or acquired)?
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tkiley
My startup was rejected for YC summer '07. I launched it while working full-
time for another company, built it to profitability over the course of a year
and a half, and quit my day job in February of this year.

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hbien
I remember checking out your site when it first launched and thought it was a
great idea. Glad to hear you executed it well too!

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Alex3917
My business became profitable this month, but it's not the same as the idea I
applied to YC with. Not sure whether that counts or not, since apparently half
of YC folks change their idea anyway. To be fair though I don't think I could
have done it without going through Seth's MBA program, which was a lot more
hands on than YC. (In terms of more contact hours, more formal instruction,
more varied curriculum, more opportunity to find a diverse set of mentors,
etc.) Also not the same co-founder, but the co-founder I applied with wasn't
the problem.

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billbarhydt
Alex3917 is there a link to your company I could check out. Congratulations on
a huge milestone. I hope you take time to celebrate.

~~~
Alex3917
Thanks bill, the link is swagapalooza.com. Basically it's a conference that
I'm leveraging to do other things. Hopefully I'll be able to post more about
this over the next 6 months.

~~~
ashishk
_Basically it's a conference_

The first header on your page is "NOT A CONFERENCE"

~~~
Alex3917
I mean what's the point of starting a business if not to mess with people? :-)

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wheels
I won't list names, but there's one team that was rejected from this batch
that had raised a series A (from a good VC) before any of the teams from the
batch did.

The fundamental thing is that you've got to want to start a startup, rather
than to be in YC -- if you want to start a startup YC can be something along
that path, but far and away most of the startups that have succeeded have done
so without YC, so that's obviously a well-worn path to success.

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jacquesm
Being accepted or not by YC has very little bearing on whether a startup can
be successful or not, I do not expect there to be any significant correlation
between YC rejected companies and accepted ones (in terms of success).

They simply have a limited amount of time.

What I do think you will find is that those that are bitter about a rejection
tend to cluster around the failure point, mostly because they will be looking
to externalize their reason for failure. That may come in many different
guises, such as 'we would have succeeded if we had been accepted' or 'we will
prove they should have accepted us'.

Just take it as an opportunity to accelerate do not worry too much about who
gets accepted and who does not.

YC likely got it wrong a number of times, as long as they use objective
criteria (only known to themselves) and gut calls on who they choose to work
with (which can just be a personal feelings issue) they are totally free to
make their decisions.

It's their time and money after all.

~~~
wheels
_> I do not expect there to be any significant correlation between YC rejected
companies and accepted ones_

That's a pretty bizarre statement. You mean to imply that the YC folks have
exactly zero predictive power in the success of a startup? That seems pretty
crazy.

I agree that being rejected by YC doesn't by any means block one from future
success, but the selection process is better than, say, random sampling. If
nothing else, there have to be a fair percentage of just plain dumb ideas that
get filtered out or patterns that emerge for people who aren't likely to pull
something off that they can predict with some degree of accuracy (no matter
how small).

~~~
jacquesm
If YC could reliably pick the winners from a given set of applications they
would be a complete outlier in the venture capital market.

I assume they're excellent judges of character, that they try to stack the
odds as good as they can in their favour in the choices that they make.

Sure the selection process is better than random sampling, after all, you
first get to discard the obviously bad stuff, I took it as read that we would
not include those in any meaningful sample.

But the tremendous amount of applications means that YCs capacity to accept,
mentor and nurture will probably be vastly outnumbered by the flood of people
applying.

Let's say we reduce it to an extreme situation, two companies apply, there is
only room for one. Both are 'pretty good', but there is a better personal
click between one of them and YC. So, that company gets selected.

In the longer term that is not a way to predict success, the other company has
just as good a shot at being successful as the one that got chose, in spite of
the 'goodies' that YC brings to the table.

In the end it is mostly up to the market and the founders.

The very best time when it helps to have an experienced investor on board is
in times of trouble, that is when it really pays off, after all, if the
investment is large enough then it is their worry as well and they may have
more experience.

At the level of investment that YC does I doubt that there is such a
commitment that the problems of the startup are synonymous with a problem for
the investors.

A second big benefit is that it may help to get further funding because of
contacts etc. once a moderate stage of success is reached.

Of course the plain dumb ideas get taken off the top, but every now and then
even a plain dumb idea gets to make it big.

There are plenty of well documented examples of VCs that said 'no' to a
winning team.

If there ever will be a VC that manages to correctly identify only the winners
then that would amaze me completely, as far as I can see they're as fallible
as any other process to select 'winners'.

They do their best but in the end nobody gets to beat the 'industry average'
by any considerable margin. Especially not in the seed stage investors.

VCs routinely hold the speech to say what it is that 'they bring to the table'
and that their involvement makes a difference.

Maybe. For the most part the companies that I know of that were successful
with an investment were only more successful, they would have succeeded
anyway, regardless of whether they found a backer or not. The success factors
that counts most are team and market, _not_ the investors.

I'm sure investors would like to think otherwise, but that's the way I see it.

Any investor that wants to make the case that the company that they invested
in would not have made it if they had not invested are discounting the biggest
factors and overselling themselves.

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bgnm2000
I feel like this question is irrelevant. If YC looks at 1000 ideas, and thinks
100 are good - they still can't take all 100 (because they don't have the
space/funding).

Therefore a company being rejected from YC may have nothing to do with whether
or not YC wanted them. Sometimes its just about logistics.

Alas, I'm sure YC has rejected companies it knew would be successful, but
accepted companies which were either more innovative/bigger market
opportunity, or which they hoped would become even more successful.

~~~
FreeRadical
But if a proportion of the other 900 companies are more successful that the
100 accepted companies, it provides some insight into the ability of YC to
pick 'winners'. Particularly if a company that is turned down out perfoms a YC
company in the same space/field.

~~~
araneae
Not necessarily; it could be that YC helps companies become winners (which it
certainly professes to.) But both YC's ability to pick winners and their
helpfulness to the chosen few would be disproved if there was no difference
between rejected and accepted applicants.

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billbarhydt
I would say that the operative questions is more about founders who become
successful after they were not accepted into a YC "class." YC themselves are
good at pointing out that most start-ups have to change direction/pivot
multiple times before being successful. That's why it's about the
people/founders imho.

I also suspect that there is little correlation in terms of success or not for
companies accepted/not accepted into YC. The one exception worth exploring is
that moving to SV for 90 days for non SV companies and working in one living
room might increase focus and hence chances of success. That would be
interesting to know.

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jack7890
My previous startup, Scribnia, was rejected a year ago. We ended up with a
nice exit, selling to a content network. It's also top 100k on Compete.

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pclark
apparently CouchDB, too.

~~~
rgr23
it's not a startup though, is it?

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DanScorpio
DriverMax from <http://www.drivermax.com> is in the Compete top 100,000. We
are not looking for VC investment. We are profitable.

~~~
veemjeem
Microsoft from <http://www.microsoft.com> is in the Compete top 100,000. We
are not looking for VC investment. We are profitable.

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edw519
I'd be willing to bet the most important metric is the startup's response to
yc rejection. Is it, "Oh well, back to the drawing board." or "They're wrong
and we'll show them."?

~~~
tomjen2
I don't know. If I had the money to invest, either response would be good
although I would prefer the last one (you know in your gut that you are right
and they are wrong, and you know you don't get anything from going back to the
drawing board).

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rw
Google?

YC is a drop in the bucket. It's a cool and potentially game-changing one, but
a drop nonetheless.

Edit: To be less snarky about it, this will probably interest you:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=550351>

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Zak
I think the question is intended to be about companies that applied to YC and
were rejected, not those that significantly predate YC.

~~~
FreeRadical
Yes, that was what I meant to say.

