
My experience as a solo founder applying to YCF with just an idea on HackerNews - abhi3
https://medium.com/@ApplyHN/my-experience-as-a-solo-founder-applying-to-yc-fellowship-with-just-an-idea-on-hacker-news-and-d04d3f44cf77#.54z9hwahi
======
minimaxir
Copy/Pasting my response from Reddit:

> They did polarize opinion but overall I think people liked them

I was one of the people who called you out for your "growth hacking," and this
assessment is blatantly wrong.

For one thing, your original Apply HN submission had a linkbait title, which
you admitted to
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11535928](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11535928)).

What you did later to polarize opinion was to _include an unnecessary link to
your Apply HN submission_ to each comment you made, which is Spam in HN's
rulebook. On the first comment you made
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11536407](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11536407))
(flagkilled), 3/3 of the comments called you out as spamming.

On the second comment you made
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11537017](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11537017)),
half the comments _still_ told you to cut it out with the advertisements.

On the third comment you made
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11537818](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11537818))
which made it obvious you were ignoring the comments on the first two
comments, I stepped in and told you were breaking HN rules, but you still did
not edit out the advertising URL. A HN moderator eventually killed your
comment.

These shenanigans most likely disqualified you from winning the YC fellowship,
which counteracts your "growth hacking is good" sentiment. The results do not
justify disregarding community sentiment.

\---

OP replied on Reddit:

> Hey man you can't see the upvotes but I can, combined the 3 comments
> received more than 100 upvotes. People complaining = 10.

> If it was against the rules I would have been banned, it was not. Anyway if
> you are suggesting I took advantage of a grey area to come up with a way to
> showcase my product, yes I did. When it was no longer gray I stopped.
> Community sentiment is subjective, even you admit half the people loved it
> but I have data to know it was way more than half. So sorry about your
> sentiments. I get your point but don't know why you care so much about it.

------
abhi3
BTW one can find out the rankings of all ApplyHN applications by _just_
upvotes here:
[http://www.thefinac.tk/applyhn/](http://www.thefinac.tk/applyhn/) (sort by
rating)

Pinboard is not a serious application so that can be ignored I guess

~~~
idlewords
Not sure on what grounds you think you can ignore Pinboard. The people have
spoken!

~~~
abhi3
Hahahaha, I'm sure a lot of people (including me) got a nice laugh from your
troll.

I suppose you are "too far along" for YC Fellowship anyway ;)

