
We Make Mistakes - katm
http://blog.ycombinator.com/we-make-mistakes
======
tomasien
I never got into Y Combinator (I think I applied 4 times but I'm not sure) but
I'm now the CEO of a rapidly growing, well funded startup that actually SERVES
an increasing number of YC companies. The way I always thought about YC was
that it is ALWAYS worth applying because the exercise is good and the upside
is high (and the downside minimal) but getting into YC should never be "part
of your plan" \- there are too many other great applicants, plain and simple.

It's the same as how no student should ever PLAN to get into Harvard, and
Harvard even has SATs and GPAs to rely on (fairly objective stats around which
you can make a guess about your odds) while YC has only heuristics based on
experience and founder reputation. Never judge yourself based on something
that has an open application process - it doesn't define you, it defines them.
No reason not to apply, but take it as a bonus if you get in, don't take it
personally if you get rejected.

~~~
downandout
_> I never got into Y Combinator but I'm now the CEO of a rapidly growing,
well funded startup that actually SERVES an increasing number of YC companies_

This this kind of thing always feels like a bit of a victory. I never came
close to being admitted to Stanford, but years ago found myself on the campus,
hiring a professor as a consultant to a startup I co-founded. As we walked
around the campus and then sat in his office, this far-off universe of people
that the Stanford admissions committee had long-ago decided were smarter and
more capable than I was suddenly seemed far less so. I was already doing what
many of the students, and even many professors, aspired to do.

A rejection from YC, Stanford, or any other exclusive club with limited space
isn't necessarily an indictment of your abilities. In the case of a startup,
launch your product and let the market tell you how valuable you are.
Remarkable products will quickly spread, and investors will line up to write
you checks. You can have VC partners worth hundreds of millions of dollars
literally walking the streets [1] to find you, too.

[1] [http://youtu.be/8-pJa11YvCs?t=13m](http://youtu.be/8-pJa11YvCs?t=13m)

~~~
vacri
I once tried to become a paramedic. I was working in a sort-of outpatient
clinic at the time, talked a couple of times with an paramedic instructor,
along with some regular officers. I never got in - the HR recruiters didn't
like me for some reason. This made no sense to the instructor, who thought I
was a prime candidate, nor to my medical colleagues, and I also later
successfully coached two friends through the process. I often wonder how life
would have turned out differently had I been accepted. Sometimes people on
both sides of the wall think you'd be the best for the job, but if the
gatekeepers don't think so... :)

~~~
hessenwolf
I got a reply from a financial engineering consultancy HR person on Friday to
say that they would not be able to process my application until I had
submitted my high school results.

From 1997.

I have several applications on the go right now, so I do not have time to go
historical for them. They miss a candidate.

~~~
hnriot
that's not unreasonable, when applying for job you need to get your stuff
together. So many companies have later found out employees claimed degrees
they never got. HR protects against that.

~~~
shaftoe
A high school diploma? Your high school grades? Who cares?

------
flipside
7th rejection, doesn't even phase me anymore. :P

For those with less experience, the disappointment will pass. Take a day if
you need to reflect on what you're doing, why you're doing it and how you
could do it better.

Rejection is fuel for the fire, use it to burn brighter going forward.

Next time, be so good they can't ignore you, simple as that.

~~~
DevX101
Persistence isn't always a virtue. If you've been rejected 7 times, please
stop expending your time and emotional energy on YC.

Redirect that energy to building your business. Build your product and get
customers/users, which is the real endgame, not getting into YC or getting a
check from a fancy Sandhill VC.

~~~
flipside
Applying to YC is a straightforward decision every time:

1\. YC would definitely be helpful and worth the equity.

2\. The application process is a helpful reality check for the status of my
startup regardless of outcome.

3\. I still believe we have crazy amounts of untapped potential.

I focus just fine on my startup the rest of the time.

------
damurdock
I'm reminded a bit of
[http://www.bvp.com/portfolio/antiportfolio](http://www.bvp.com/portfolio/antiportfolio),
a collection of companies that applied to Bessemer Venture Partners for VC
funds, were denied, and went on to make it big.

~~~
graycat
Sure, easily can conclude that BVP and other VC firms believe that they have a
particular way to evaluate applications and make money. This does not mean
that they have the ability or obligation, or even make an effort, accurately
to evaluate every application that comes through their door.

So, likely, net, if they are making money, then they are happy about the money
they are making, smile all the way to the bank, and just f'get about the rest.

~~~
7Figures2Commas
_If_ they are making money? Venture funds are generally structured using the 2
and 20 model. The first 2 refers to an annual fee of 2% of committed capital
for the life of the fund. Venture funds typically have a life of 10 years.

I believe Bessemer's last fund was $1.6 billion, so assuming a typical 2 and
20 structure, that would be $32 million/year, or $320 million over a 10 year
fund's life, _guaranteed_.

~~~
graycat
Yup, that's one way to make money.

But as in

[http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/02/venture-capital-
returns.html...](http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/02/venture-capital-
returns.html#disqus_thread)

on average the VC returns to the limited partners have not been very good.

------
vishnupr
A relevant question I asked PG a year ago: [Do you review rejected YC apps to
find startups who then made it big?] -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7122774](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7122774)

~~~
rdlecler1
I've mentioned this in another post. I'm a CPSC University of Calgary alum.
James Gosling (Founder of Java) is also an alum. A bunch of my profs went to
school with him back in the 70s and the stories they told about him. Well he
was a legend. One day he came to do a talk when I was in undergrad. He told us
that he applied to every major CPSC school for his PhD and was rejected
__EVERYWHERE __except for Carnegie Mellon. As he was about to walk across the
stage to be awarded his degree there, they pulled him aside and told him that
each year they randomly select one person that they initially rejected and
accepted that person, and that he was the first one that ever graduated. Even
James needed luck. I would love to see the same experiment done with YC. IT
would be one hell of an experiment.

~~~
tsenkov
This is a very interesting case, indeed.

I think YC used to accept awesome teams with (seemingly) bad ideas. Which is
only partially like your example. But I don't believe they are doing it now
with so many applications (40% more than S14).

Anyone has any examples pointing the other?

------
onuryavuz
This was our first time, and we are rejected.
([http://cubic.fm](http://cubic.fm))

During the application process I started to realize, YC asks all the right
questions. Just trying to find proper answers is a huge step forward for the
first timers, like us. We learned a lot.

I think, the only thing that missing is the feedback loop. I'm aware of the
fact that there are more applicants than YC could accept, or provide a
feedback. But after all, we still need a feedback.

After I saw the rejection email, first I planned to share our application in
HN to get feedback from the community. But now I see this is a need for all
the rejected applicants. I'm not sure what could be a better way for closing
the feedback loop. Maybe, there's a start-up idea in here somewhere :)

------
zeeshanm
Anyone feeling down should read Ev William's story from "Founders at Work" on
how he had to create, recreate, and recreate his team at Blogger. There was an
year when he was the only one running Blogger when the entire team left. It is
truly inspiring!

Great things can happen when you're low on budget and there are numerous
entrepreneurial stories about those early days. Sometimes it is much needed to
go through the early struggles to come out even stronger in the end.

------
waterlesscloud
"In this cycle we saw a +40% increase in the number of companies applying over
the Summer 2014 batch."

Yikes! That's a major increase in applications. Has that number always grown
that fast?

I wonder what the saturation point will be...

~~~
dvt
I think 40% is atypically high. However, people have been wondering what the
saturation point might be (with no sign of slowing down) for years ;)

------
Fando
There are more applicants than YCombinator could accept (or anyone could
accept if you look at it in scale). Someone should create a social-media type
website for YCombinator applicants (or anyone) to share their stories, meet,
interact, network, learn, and collaborate on new and existing ideas. Imagine
how many start-ups would be "born" like this. Think of how many great ideas
don't get in or simply don't apply, think of how BIG this community could grow
to be in a short time - it would grow by itself. Look at what Kickstarter is
doing. Think of how many new comers this type of stepping stone would benefit
and help achieve their ideas. Starting this community is possible by creating
a great website that creatively engages members to collaborate. Let
YCombinator (and anyone else) endorse it - first to members of the y-community
then others. In fact "y-community" should be the name of it. We all know that
out kind already burn with passion, desire and creativity. With minimal
guidance from YCombinator it could succeed faster - passionate desires of
those not-accepted will continue to burn and be fostered. Eventually, and this
is speculating perhaps, if YCombinator becomes somewhat involved, with so many
start-up communities popping-up in every city and country, this website, could
grow to become the "Facebook" of start-ups. (only it would also be productive
:) But seriously.

~~~
hillis
The website you're describing already exists. In fact, you just posted on it.

~~~
Fando
You're obviously right to think that hillis. What are your thoughts on the
potential that could be achieved if YCombinator would build on the idea?

~~~
kevin
If? We are!

------
taytus
First rejection but I have a smile in my face. I did it, I had the courage to
apply. So... yeah I'm happy.

~~~
rdlecler1
Good work. We were invited for an interview, but I can tell you that I've
failed to get an opportunity so many times in my life that I've lost count.
I've had a handful of wins, but have thrown the dice tens of thousands of
times. Opportunity is a fickle beast. There have been dark dark days (and
months). My ego and pride is covered with calluses. It's depressing and it
makes your humble, but it's not a sign of defeat. Push through if only because
the alternative is to concede defeat.

A couple of my biggest regrets are not applying to Google in 2000 when I was
graduating from CPSC: "Search engine? Well that sounds boring. And they don't
even have a business model!".. Opps....

The other was not applying to YC in November 2009. "Oh the next class is too
far away." I had a killer prototype, and since then the whatifs always haunted
me.

Better to try, and be overlooked, than to never try at all.

~~~
sf_angular_dude
may i ask why not applying to yc in 2009 was such a big regret? was it because
it was less competitive back then, and you think things might have turned out
differently? just curious. TIA!

------
AustinPythonFTW
I'm definitely speaking at least a little bit out of bitterness (our team just
got rejected), so with that caveat it feels like YC is becoming more like
traditional VC (venture capital): \- extremely low probability of success just
due to volume of applications \- no feedback (again, due to volume of
applications, and they posted a nice blog post about this, but just stating a
fact) \- it seems (I don't have any factual evidence to back this up, would
love to be proven wrong through factual evidence) that you need to know
someone \- tendency to fund those who need it the least (already-proven user
traction or revenue)

YC is a for-profit, private enterprise that can do whatever it wants, and it
is in the business of maximizing income, so it would be foolish for the
organization not to act in a self-interested way, but just calling it like I
see it (and again, it'd be great if there were any stats the organization
could release to disprove any of the points above, but I understand that it
has no obligation to do so).

~~~
jl
We've been doing pretty much the same things since we started in 2005: we've
never given specific feedback about rejections at the application stage (it
wasn't going to scale even when we only got a few hundred applications). We
funded 8 startups in our first batch, which was roughly 2-3% of the total
applications.

We definitely fund people who have no connection to folks we already know, or
Silicon Valley for that matter. And we also fund startups who are at the idea
stage and have no traction (though traction does help).

I'm very sorry we rejected you, but we are honestly often wrong.

~~~
AustinPythonFTW
thanks for the comment. YC is definitely great about being very respectful to
applicants in its process and blog posts, so don't get me wrong.

I'm just wondering if there's a way for people to understand what their
chances are. For example, if 0.01% of people that have lower than a 650 GMAT
get into Stanford, then that would be useful information to know (for hopeful
applicants).

Similarly, if the "has revenue" cohort has a 15% interview rate, and the "pre-
revenue" cohort has a 0.5% interview rate, that would also be really great to
know. (same thing for solo vs. multiple founders, recommended vs. non-
recommended, etc).

I understand that YC has no obligation to provide this information, and
perhaps there are very good reasons why it wouldn't provide it even if it was
available. It would just be useful to know if possible.

~~~
ig1
The curve is far less uniform than you might imagine.

There are going to be a few companies which are obvious superstars (great
team, market, execution, traction, etc.) which will be obvious yeses. You're
either in this group or your not.

There are many many companies which are obviously bad: weak team, bad market,
poorly thought through idea, pre-product, etc. These companies would get
rejected regardless of how many companies applied.

Then you have the companies in the middle. That's where the competition is. It
doesn't really matter how many companies are in the previous groups, what
matters is how you rank compared to the "maybes".

~~~
AustinPythonFTW
ig1: your comment is very insightful -- it may be a situation where you, as an
insider and experienced founder, can more clearly delineate between the
categories (particularly obviously bad vs. middle) than some of us (first time
founders, etc). anyways, it's a good point, thank you.

------
Udo
Damn, I was thinking about trying for a "late" application, but
apply.ycombinator.com seems to be down.

Does anyone know if they still allow this, in principle? Or are batches now so
saturated (with good ideas) that they dropped the option?

~~~
kevin
We do still allow late apps. We're working on the problem and hope to have it
back up soon. Sorry guys!

~~~
BillionaireBear
What happens if a rejected company from this batch submits a late application.
Does this paradox cause the universe to implode?

Haha - honestly though , is this acceptable?

~~~
Brandrsn
From apply.ycombinator.com:

"You are listed as a founder on another application. Please do not create a
new application unless you're applying with a different startup."

Was worth a look... :-)

------
KetciaThach
Been rejected , but been viewed by 6 people (alumni/or YC) and it is a victory
for us for a first time. In the end it is all about what resonate the most to
them, YC has its agenda if you dont fit in it , doesnt mean you're bad or your
idea is not smart enough. It means you don't fit . That's all. We will keep on
working and apply in 6 months or just never apply again and make it work on
our own. And I think the worst case would have been to be accepted by YC and
fail once I got out of it ... which happens a lot !! :) Thanks for all YC

------
ninajlu
Got in this batch on our second time applying. First time we applied with an
idea: now we have a product and customers. In retrospect I think the initial
rejection was reasonable.

------
lubos
If you want to get into YC, it's quite simple.

You have to optimize for what they want and considering how transparent the
application process is, it's actually quite easy. PG's essays are step-by-step
guides on how to "tick" all the right boxes. They even give you the list of
ideas they _wish_ to fund. How nice of them... No wonder YC has announced that
quality of applications is increasing. It's not increasing because startups
are getting better. It's increasing because more startups are optimizing.

Remember Nikki Durkin from 99dresses? She didn't just apply. She spent huge
amount of time researching partners, their history, what they liked, what they
wanted to hear... and she has delivered just that like a rockstar. How many
promising founders are rejected because they just didn't bother to optimize
like Durkin?

To me, if you get rejected, it just means you didn't put enough time into the
application. If your goal is to get into YC, then keep trying, you will figure
it out.

But in the end, if you are real entrepreneur, figure out what you are doing
with your business. Don't optimize for YC, just do what you've got to do and
if YC wants to join you for a ride, then fine. If not, too bad for them.

~~~
coffeemug
Optimizing for what you think YC partners want is a sure way to not get into
YC. You're not a mind reader; what you think they want is almost certainly
different from what they actually want. More importantly, they read thousands
of applications, and you're only working on one. They can smell people who are
trying to game them from a thousand miles away.

Just doing what you do is the only thing that matters and will get you in,
assuming you're doing the right thing. (Asking alums for feedback on the
application is a very good way to make sure you're doing the right thing and
your presentation doesn't suck)

~~~
gohrt
Your theory seems to apply to SEO as well (just make the best content, and
google will rank it highest for relevant terms), and yet the whole SEO
industry exists, and most of journalism has changed the way it uses language
so that it is more parsable by googlebot -- Google Standard English.

------
graycat
The start-ups that are of the most interest are necessarily exceptional and
significantly different from start-ups in the past, successful or not. Thus,
evaluating start-ups when looking for the ones of most interest is
challenging, and evaluations via simple, empirical patterns from the past
promise to select a lot of straw and miss some golden needles.

Really the challenge here is common, nearly standard, and a very old story
that goes back to nothing less than the _Mother Goose_ children's story "The
Little Red Hen": What the hen was doing was unusual and, therefore, not in the
experience of others. Thus, no one would help her. But when she had hot,
fragrant loaves of bread freshly out of her oven and eager, hungry, paying
customers lined up to buy, lots of people were ready to _help_. But in the
interim she had to work alone with just her own evaluation, creativity, and
determination. No doubt that story is in _Mother Goose_ because the situation
was both common and ancient.

What is needed are better means of evaluating projects. For a special,
relatively small, collection of projects, there are such means, highly
polished, e.g., for grant applications to NSF, NIH, and DARPA, similarly for
Ph.D. dissertation proposals, and also for a huge range of US DoD projects,
e.g., the SR-71, the F-117, GPS. Generally these projects and their
evaluations have much better _batting average_ than Silicon Valley equity
funded information technology start-up projects.

Maybe what Silicon Valley is doing is making money, and the YC $30+ billion is
astoundingly impressive, but one major success can be worth $300 billion, 10
times as much, so that we have to suspect that better evaluations could lead
to better returns.

------
MarkyPc3
Last I applied as a single founder I got an interview. Now I have a cofounder
and made significant progress but our application didn't earn us an interview
(the second time applying with this idea.) Perhaps I took something for
granted when i applied this time so the app turned out weaker or disappointing
but I realize how lucky I was to get feedback last time as opposed to none at
all now.

~~~
untilHellbanned
This seems strange. Any areas your application changed? What did you think you
did better this time?

------
chacham15
Is it just me or does the application to YC feel like a pitch to an investor?
I understand that for very specific cases they might be different in that they
can see some early potential. However, if you're not one of those lucky few,
then it feels like if you're at the point where you can convince YC to invest,
you're already not too far from being able to convince an investor to invest.
E.g. I've gotten the advice from multiple people at or affiliated with YC:
"get users and show growth". But, for me specifically, if I had users and
growth already, there is little more that the money that YC would help me
raise can do. If I got into YC earlier, I would have hired people to help
build the product which people want. Yes, there is a lot of work to grow post
product, but in my case, money wouldnt really help that much (my case is
desktop software, so I dont really need more server capacity or have scaling
issues like other companies do).

------
MCRed
One of the things that I've found so challenging about applying for
accelerators is that it's difficult to find examples of companies that got in
or that didn't get in, and what they did for their applications. Every time I
have come across one, I've learned a bit - like "that didn't work" or "that
was a great idea" \- around how they apply, pitch themselves or their product,
etc.

Anyone who was rejected want to share any of their application info, like team
or product demo videos, or their website and a one line pitch? I know you
might not want to for competitive reasons, and I understand.

But there's always things we can learn from each other, so if you want to
share I'm sure I'm not the only one who would appreciate seeing what didn't
work. :-)

~~~
aliakhtar
I'll share a bit. I'm a solo, international founder. I applied with a barely
usable, very limited prototype, of a technically challenging project
(involving A.I and machine learning). My video was viewed twice, and my demo
was viewed, but no other action was taken within it. I was rejected.

I expected that, given that my prototype was pretty bad, and I have a lot
going against me. It definitely lit a fire under me just to apply though - and
the questions that the application asks, are things you really need to think
about. I definitely don't regret applying. And the fact that my demo & video
were viewed - makes me think that perhaps my idea is somewhat promising.

I plan on improving my product a lot and re-applying next batch.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12DAjoONx9E&t=35s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12DAjoONx9E&t=35s)

~~~
MCRed
I was a "solo founder" type for awhile. If you're an engineer I think you can
have your pick of co-founders.

My suggestion, after working on and for startups for a couple decades is that
you should be the CEO, find business people to be co-founders, and hire a VP
of engineering, or CTO.

It's almost a cliche that there are business guys "starting companies" who
"just need an engineer"... but I think the best chances for success - on a
high tech startup - are for the engineer to be the CEO, and eventually bring
on a CTO.

One advantage of this- the CEO is focused on product while the business guys
(COO, CMO, whatever) are out doing the legwork for raising money. I've seen
too many companies flounder because the CEO was focused on raising money.

You can learn business, they can't learn engineering. (well, they can, but not
to your level in the time available.)

~~~
aliakhtar
I'm not going to get a co-founder just to get into YC.

~~~
wellboy
You do need a co-founder though to build a startup. The value of having 1
person to bounce ideas off is incredible versus just yourself. The value of
the second co-founder for bouncing ideas off is 50% less than for the first
one, that's why one co-founder is optimal.

~~~
aliakhtar
I bounce ideas with my friends - and I don't have to give them 50% of my
business!

------
michaelchisari
First application, got rejected. Honestly happy it happened now instead of
after the interview. It gives me more time to think about what's next.

My startup is movie industry related, so maybe Los Angeles would be a better
place to be. I'll post the startup site here when we launch.

~~~
wj
Looking forward to seeing it. Lots of room for innovation in the entertainment
industry.

I have a small web app for low budget filmmakers that a hesitate to call a
startup (I think rocket growth might be particularly hard to achieve in the
production side of the industry). More of a business in its infancy.

Best of luck to you.

------
7Figures2Commas
> Don’t let funding take your eye off the goal: making something people want.
> Everything else, including going through Y Combinator, is there to support
> that goal but is not the goal itself.

It would be interesting to see a chart plotting over time the number of
applicants in each batch who have applied to YC multiple times. Based on the
number of folks here on HN who have apparently applied multiple times, and for
different concepts no less, it seems plausible that a not insignificant
percentage of the applicant pool now consists of folks who, contrary to YC's
own advice, are more focused on getting accepted into YC than building a real
business.

~~~
paul
The best way to get into YC is to build a great business :)

~~~
qazawy1001
honest question because I hear this line from YC partners, then at that point
why as founders would we need YC at all?

~~~
danieltillett
You don't, but if you are dumb enough to give them a share of your business
they are happy to take it.

~~~
sokoloff
I think the math is quite favorable to taking YC investment as a +EV decision
until quite a late stage in a successful startup's development.

pg wrote about this pretty convincingly here:
[http://paulgraham.com/equity.html](http://paulgraham.com/equity.html)

Unless you are comparing YC against an actual term sheet in your hand with at
least 2X better terms, that YC is overwhelmingly likely a good deal. There
might be good reasons not to enter YC for some companies, but the 6% equity is
rarely the determining one, even for companies with revenue and sustainable
Ramen profits.

------
qopp
The whole process makes seems to make some people feel like it's asking
someone out or trying out for a play (i.e. the video interview, etc) so I can
see why people can take it so harshly.

Your application/video/product could be flawless and literally solve world
hunger but the process isn't objective as all that. In the end they just pick
a handful of people out of all the applications that they want to invest in.

I'm sure that most applications there was no reason at all that they chose not
to accept them. They just didn't.

------
jaksmit
"In this cycle we saw a +40% increase in the number of companies applying" —
roughly how many applications were there? 1000? 10,000?

Also, how many teams make it to the interview stage?

~~~
drawkbox
Seconded, some metrics on this yearly would be great if at all possible. To
give the applicants some sort of perspective.

In terms of the companies that make it, previous years the amount that make it
in range up to 80 but they reduced it to 50 last year. 500 or so total YC
companies since inception (2005).

------
BillionaireBear
Dissapointed, got very positive feedback from an alum prior to applying. But
alas, that was not enough. :) I do find that international founders are at a
distinct disadvantage due to lack of networking opportunities (which
definitely plays a big part when each application probably receives 5 minutes
per reviewer). That said - you could argue that any great entrepreneur would
not allow that to be a barrier hehe!

Best of luck to everyone who has an interview and those who don't.

------
iamjoday
Hi Friends,

I've just received rejection email from Ycombinator... :( Though I realize,
how competitive it gets to get in, its not the start one expect for their
product or idea...

while, I am working on to make my product, I would appreciate if fellow
community members can help point out ares of improvement in my product,

[http://joday.com](http://joday.com)

Thanks for your time! I really appreciate it!

Nish Founder, Joday.com

------
ececconi
It's easier to imagine that YC can't take all of the good companies that apply
if you imagine they could only pick one company out of 10,000 applying. The
goal should be to build a great company using whatever resources and networks
of people you have available. Not just gaining entry here.

------
userium
As many here told, the process of applying is valuable in itself.

Our application was rejected, but you can sign up for a beta invite here:
[https://userium.com/](https://userium.com/) Soon 400 sign ups and counting.
:)

------
fsoroush
We haven't received any response yet... Anybody else NOT received a response ?

------
pptr1
"Don’t let funding take your eye off the goal: making something people want.
Everything else, including going through Y Combinator, is there to support
that goal but is not the goal itself." Exactly...

~~~
MCRed
This is particularly challenging, since, given the amount of effort it takes
to make an application, if you apply to multiple accelerators during
"application season" it's easy for it to be a full time job.

It's very easy to believe "if only we just got in... we'd have the money to do
X".

------
doddavenkatappa
We too got the rejection letter. But it is perfectly understandable in our
case as we are really in the early stages, without a prototype.

Any thoughts on how much a prototype and full-time commitment from all
founders matter?

~~~
wellboy
If you haven't sold a previous company before, you need to have strong
traction (at least 5,000 users or $5,000 revenue within the last 6 months),
otherwise you don't have a chance really.

Also, you need to have a full-time commitment, otherwise they won't give you
$120,000 if that makes sense.

------
rudeboy347
Thank you YC. I hope to be in the batch one of these days.Congrats to the
successful applicants. For those who were rejected, reflect, revaluate and
reapply.

------
paul9290
I'm curious to how many founders in this batch are...

\- Over 35

\- Female

\- African American

Edit: My post here is to gauge if the needle of progress in our industry is
moving forward in the terms of race, age and sex.

~~~
rdlecler1
We were accepted for an interview (Not accepted to the class yet). I'm 41 and
my co-founder (who doesn't looks quite as young as I am) is 47. To be honest,
I fully expected a rejection for this very reason so I'm pleasantly surprised
which is actually pretty consistent with the YC brand.

To make a fair assessment you also need to look at the distribution of
applicants. If 15% of applicants are female, then your null hypothesis is that
15% of founders will be female.

~~~
paul9290
Congratulations!

I do wonder if you...

\- Are already generating revenue

\- Have lots of traction/traffic

\- Sold previous start-ups and or companies before

\- Worked at and or working at Apple, Facebook, Google or similar companies

\- Ran a successful KickStarter

\- Went to an ivy league school

As for us.. I am 39 and this is my second start-up. My co-founder is 21. Our
first start-up idea (was a novel idea at the time) has since gone onto being
worked on/copied by dozens, including one now with millions of users. We were
not technical when we started our first start-up, but did receive a fair
amount of attention for the concept.

Overall, I don't think that matters due to the competition you face in
applying for YC. I would assume many who are interviewed & accepted can check
off a few of those questions I asked above. Though maybe not?

Not sure we will apply again since we applied in April of 2013. Though when we
applied in 2013 & got rejected we soon were invited to demo our technology to
an entity in the valley. That is an interesting story in itself. Maybe that
will happen again :-)

Well we were not lucky this time, I wish you better luck!

~~~
rdlecler1
Revenue: I wish. We're in a highly regulated environment and we didn't raise
enough money to get a broker dealer license so we had to defer revenue because
we couldn't afford it as well as the legal and compliance costs.

Traffic/Traction. Wow, Two different things. We're an investment marketplace
for agriculture and agtech ([http://agfunder.com](http://agfunder.com)).
Listed companies have raised $10.5M since Feb2014, we have another $2M in live
deals, and about $12M in deal flow coming on in the next 4 weeks. So in that
respect traction is huge, this is not being funded by thousands of investors
but by VCs in Silicon Valley family or in Russia, offices, strategics. In our
case the LTV of a customer is in the hundreds of thousands so we don't need
traffic in the millions. We average about 5,000 uniques per month, and we have
about a 1% conversion rate, of which 0.25% are investors.

Sold previous startups: No. I wish. I wouldn't be living off my credit card
right now.

Apple/Facebook/Google: No.

KickStarter: No, family then advisories, and then friends of friends got us
this far but it has been very very painful and it seemed like just when we
were on deaths door (Maxed credit cards, zero sleep for 2 weeks) that we had a
stay of execution.

Ivy: Yes. I have a PhD from Yale and have published in Nature, Harvard
Business Review, and most recently TechCrunch so I had a lot of social proof
to work with (That said I have ADD and dyslexia and I didn't graduate from
high school so don't let a poor start hold you back). I'm sure this played in,
but it is possible to build up your CV. I think YC (and frankly everyone else)
wants to know that you are someone who is capable of doing something
extraordinary. You need to give them data points. Start with some baby steps
and leverage your way into something bigger. I submitted several articles to
TC before one was accepted.

------
guelo
Does YC get every single early startup applying now? Why would an early
startup not apply? Seems like it's almost a requirement now.

------
viksit
Does this include late apps? Curious about the decisions on apps that came in
hours or days after the 8p deadline.

~~~
kevin
You can pretty much late apply all the way until the next batch starts.
There's not really a formal process with late applications, though. We do read
through them all eventually and we'll respond to all of you. Right now, the
rough deadline for us is by the end of the year.

~~~
viksit
Ah got it. So this means late apps still haven't been reviewed?

------
stevephillips
This sounds pretty honest and heart felt.

------
pardeepg
I have not received any response from YC yet. should we wait or contact YC for
application status?

------
qazawy1001
you make mistakes and we will remember.

btw, it just might be sour grapes, but i get the feeling yc app process is
highly gamed right now and being rejected by it is not useful enough
information to act on for the founders - which is the hallmark of a good
investor.

~~~
aliakhtar
[http://i.imgur.com/4zlJhGg.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/4zlJhGg.jpg)

------
charendy
I think is time you guys dig into Africa, the fast growing emerging market.

------
bozoUser
do the co-founders also get the email? I dont see one in my inbox yet..

~~~
thatmatt
I think just the main submitter.

------
yunnnyunnn
Thanks YC

------
monsterix
This is the exact case of a crowded doorway [1] we discussed almost two years
ago on HN: Higher the number of applications implies higher the perceivable
quality of YC applications. Implies higher the probability of riskier bets to
fall through.

What's potentially dangerous about this situation is that quite a few glossy
low-risk companies will outdo the more riskier ones - even though YC staff is
one of the best in the world and thoroughly equipped to do what it does - and
thus lowering the chances of fishing real gems off the coast.

I do not have the numbers, but how have the batches of later years done as
compared to the early ones which had Dropbox, Airbnb in them?

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5648760](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5648760)

------
the_cat_kittles
"We Make Mistakes" is such a pretentious title because you think people hold
ycombinator in such high esteem that you need to say that

~~~
sfeng
They're trying to be kind to the people they just refused, I'm not sure why
that's pretentious. If you applied, presumably you wanted to get in and
reminding them that it's not necessarily them or their company which is wrong
is a kind thing to do.

~~~
dropit_sphere
Actually, I think this is the most important part of the process. When you're
small you have the luxury of making mistakes and no one cares. When you wield
some power/prestige and your actions affect other peoples' lives, people start
coming to you with grievances. The worst part is that often those grievances
are "deserved" \--- I guarantee that some startup w/o an interview request
will make it big, and one that gets accepted will slink off and die. That
doesn't mean that YC is failing, just that the problem is _really hard_.

~~~
yarou
The problem itself isn't very hard, at least not in the mathematical sense of
the word. It's just that it's a human process, and is thus prone to the
failings of human beings, including the various biases that human beings are
known to have.

------
brentxphillips
So how would YC classify passing over interviewing former United Nations staff
working on reducing the turnaround time and effort it takes aid groups to
raise funds to develop, launch and sustain operations responding to the worst
humanitarian crises the world has seen in an era? Does this fit in the mistake
category or the we’re just naively stupid and don’t have the time to bother
spending 5 minutes hearing about your project category?

Aid groups are choking on sheltering and feeding millions of refugees
streaming out of Syria and Iraq but who gives a fuck?

~~~
ericd
They've got much more interest than they can deal with, such that even very
good teams can be passed over. Just try again next time, and try not to take
it personally. And in the meantime, keep on working on it.

~~~
esusinc
As an East Coast located start up there is the feel of being on the outside
looking in. There seems to be obstacles to overcome...be it culturally and
geographically. As a startup in an growth industry (UAV/UAS)that happens to
focus more on the service delivery and hardware side, how do you overcome the
software centric focus of YC?

------
monksy
Why not do the 1871 startup incubator in Chicago?

------
aloma85
If you are not a White or Asian male, don't even bother. Someone needs to
start a fund for African Americans.

~~~
jacquesm
That's nonsense. If you're black, female or eskimo, any combination of those
and whatever else you could come up with that would put you into a minority
group _PLEASE_ do apply with your start-up, that's the only way the numbers
will start to reflect society as a whole.

------
resca79
I appreciate the seriously of Y Combinator, but I dislike an article like
that, first the title: 'We make mistakes'

While I found the rejection a good and sincere email, I'm trying to figure out
the role of this article

------
pulkitpulkit
I get YC makes mistakes (as does everyone else) but I expected / wished /
hoped that the response would be figuring out how to make fewer mistakes;
maybe an improved process to reduce the risk of mistakes and not just a blog
post throwing their hands in the air and wishing everyone that fell on the
wrong side good luck. I think they owe that to their stakeholders, if not all
the aspiring entrepreneurs out there. This makes it seem like they don't
really care...

