
YC Fellowship rejection letter - useflyer
Thank you for applying for Y Combinator Fellowship. However, your startup was not selected for an interview. We thought your application was very promising -- out of over 6,500 applications, yours made it to the final 300.<p>Since there is a limit on the number of startups we can accept for this beta test of the Fellowship, we had to turn away a huge amount of promising groups. Hopefully in the future, we can expand the Fellowship and fund even more companies this way.<p>Unfortunately beyond that, we can&#x27;t give you individual feedback about your application. This page explains why: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ycombinator.com&#x2F;whynot&#x2F;<p>That said, we sincerely hope you&#x27;ll apply to YC&#x27;s winter batch. Applications for that are scheduled to open the week of August 24th.
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jlitalien
Thank you for applying for Y Combinator Fellowship. We’re sorry to say that
your startup was not selected for an interview. We read through more than
6,500 applications, and since there's a limit on the number of startups we can
interview, we had to turn away a huge number of promising groups.

Unfortunately we can't give you individual feedback about your application.
This page explains why:
[http://ycombinator.com/whynot/](http://ycombinator.com/whynot/)

We sincerely hope this won't stop you from pursuing your startup. We're not
yet sure if we'll continue to do YC Fellowship past this pilot program, but we
definitely welcome and encourage you to apply to YC in the future. Having
applied to YC Fellowship will in no way count against you, and a surprisingly
large number of companies are funded after applying to YC programs more than
once.

We're trying to get better at this, but it's 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.

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irinaba
Thats cool! so, the normal rejection letter means that we didn't make it into
top 300 and that we are not potential YC’s Winter 2016 batch. It's really such
a pity that there is no real feedback that could help to improve
pitch/business model ...!

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DanBC
Have you done a ShowHN / AskHN? I'm not sure how good the feedback is, but it
seems rigorous in the showHN threads.

~~~
irinaba
Thanks Dan! Thats a good idea. I will do that!

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natmaster
Guys, a really important thing I noticed here, and please tell me if this is
consistent with what you did: Applying late is bad for YC, especially in this
fellowship case.

I got this rejection letter, and there was no evidence my application was even
looked at. I didn't apply literally at the last minute, but I submitted the
last day.

I had applied for summer YC batch before, and there I got people thoroughly
exploring my demo, watching my app videos, and even looking at my linkedin
profile. This time I got 0 hits across all mediums. Not even the video.

Please share if you had similar or difference experience as I think we will
all benefit from this knowledge.

~~~
snake117
I believe this too. I wasn't expecting for there to be so many applicants,
given that the application was open for only one week; I certainly learned my
lesson. I read on another article that they only accepted 20 teams out of the
6500 pool. I can only imagine that they came across these teams early on and
didn't pay a lot of attention to the rest of the pool, especially one's like
mine where, now that I look back on it, my application was not ready for
submission. When I read what I wrote, I used way to many "weasel words", as PG
would say, and didn't state clearly anything in my application.

So to anyone reading this, if you apply to YC, make sure you do these two
things: 1) Have a clear, well-written application that states your idea and
your background clearly. 2) Start your application early and submit it early.
This is one of those things that can only help you.

~~~
mattkrisiloff
We did read every single submission. That doesn't mean we watched every demo /
intro video (even for some invited to interviews), but we read everything.

I hope you'll still consider applying again in the future.

~~~
snake117
Sorry about the assumption. That's actually pretty amazing that you guys
managed to read through every application. Even though I was rejected the
application was still worth doing because it forced me to think thoroughly
about my product. I will still apply in the future.

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jrbaldwin
Thank you for applying for the Y Combinator Fellowship. We’re sorry to say
that your startup was not selected for an interview. We think your startup
would be more appropriate for YC’s Winter 2016 batch, and we encourage you to
apply.

The startups we have invited to YC Fellowship interviews are primarily
founders in the idea or prototype stage, and most are first-time founders who
haven’t previously raised funding. We're asking almost all companies that are
further along or with more experienced founders to apply to YC winter batch.

Applications open the week of August 24th at apply.ycombinator.com. We
sincerely hope you will apply!

~~~
almeidamarcell
We received the same. Do you think they are being honest with this one? Maybe
we have a chance for the Winter batch.

~~~
jrbaldwin
We hope so, we'll reapply for Winter. Good luck to you!

~~~
almeidamarcell
You too, mate!

See ya.

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acirinelli
Made it to the top 300 (5%), so I'm satisfied with that. I think I'll improve
my application and apply to the winter batch.

~~~
kom107
How do you know? I don't mean to be rude but I'm just curious as someone who
applied and was rejected.

My team and I are planning on continuing on. Good luck to everyone else who is
in the same boat!

~~~
rachellaw
Sam A. said that they received around +6500~ applications, so being in the top
300 would make you in the 5%

[https://twitter.com/sama/status/626523690533027840](https://twitter.com/sama/status/626523690533027840)

~~~
kom107
Awesome. Thanks!!

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jtouri
That's something! And I truly believe they don't just say these things, they
know that people can turn their startups around, so hopefully it will be a
more attractive application the next time you apply.

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kvatthro
looking at some applications that got into YC (not fellowship though), it
seems biggest 'mistakes' are 1 - wasting even one word not sharing more,
enthusiasm hurts you in this case; 2 - technical founders, 3 - team of
COfounders. I believe you can pass with one of those 3 'rules', but just the
one. Nevertheless, I'll love to help them learn from their mistakes.

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jacques_chester
And to think, the odds were still thousands of times better than a regular
lottery.

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omnivore
So it begins...

