
RejectedByYc.com - For those of us who didn't make the cut. - nostrademons
http://www.rejectedbyyc.com/
======
nostrademons
As you might have guessed from the name, this site grew out of our yCombinator
rejection. Like about 375 other applicants, we didn't even make it to the
interview stage.

I sat around feeling bummed for about an hour, read some of the forum posts,
and then decided that there was something I could do about the situation. As I
see it, there are 5 main reasons to go to yCombinator:

1\. Money. The $15k or so that yCombinator gives can be useful for some
people.

2\. Connections. They're very good at making introductions to investors, and
give you instant credibility.

3\. Advice. They've been through the startup experience before, and have seen
numerous startups succeed or fail.

4\. Marketing. "A yCombinator startup" seems to get instant attention on
certain venues, particularly with the influential early-adopter market.

5\. Camaraderie. I suspect that a large amount of the success of yCombinator
startups is simply due to having a bright, passionate peer group, all going
through the same experience. Some of PG's comments have suggested this too:
when groups have worked off-site they "looked like the plant that just didn't
get the miracle gro".

I can't do anything about #1 or #2. I'm hungry for #3, but there are other
sources of information out there. Get a few dozen people that are starting or
have started companies together, and a few are bound to know the answer you're
looking for. I _can_ do something about #4 and 5, and that's what inspired
this site.

This is basically a place for startup founders to show off their work, get
quality feedback, and then release it for the world. When you register your
startup, you're randomly assigned to a group. It tries to put startups in the
same city together, though there's a random factor so you don't end up with 7
startups in one city and 1 by itself. (In the future, I'd also like to add the
ability to pick your group.) If you have not launched yet, all your feature
announcements - and the existence of your startup at all - will only be
visible to your demo group. Once you have launched, they become public for
everyone to view, letting you gain some publicity.

I was inspired by organizations such as the Grameen Bank and the Harry Potter
fandom. The Grameen Bank lends money to _groups_ of people, never to
individuals themselves. This produces strong peer pressure to repay the loan.
Similarly, it's much more difficult to give up on the startup dream when
you'll be letting down the 7 other startups in your group. When I add karma,
there'll be both a group component and an individual component, fostering a
sort of "coopetition" between and within groups.

As for Harry Potter - in fandom, there's a "social price" to membership. You
have to write fics. When you join, people want to know what you've written,
and they want you to comment on the stuff they've written. Similarly, the hope
is that the social price here will be that you keep pumping out features and
gaining users. The site is open to anyone actively involved in starting a
startup: the one requirement is that you _do_ things and don't just talk about
them.

There's a lot more I'd like to add to this site: karma and stats are high on
my priority list, as is Markdown for comments and announcements, and it could
use a bit of a UI makeover. I'll try to keep up on feature requests and
bugfixes, but I do have a day job, and this is a side-project aside from our
main startup. Please bear with us; this was done on a very tight timetable (2
weeks from rejection to site launch), and hasn't had too much testing.

~~~
whacked_new
Interesting concept. I believe there are more than a handful of regulars on
this site that feel the need for better organization, and given how busy pg is
(and he admits it), it makes sense to just take a stab. But do differentiate.
Your project is in the right direction, but I agree it doesn't need to cater
specifically towards YC rejects. "YC rejects" is probably the most exclusive
group after "YC teams" (jk, well, you get me). Also see
<http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=16211> I dunno the overlap or
similarity in vision, but it just seemed logical to ref it here.

The 5 points you list above sum to something greater than just those points.
It's like a huge funded, connected marketing machine of experienced hackers.
Camaraderie is an interesting point; in YC it's very easy to get everybody "on
the same boat." YC invests in you, you deliver. They work for you, their
investments, you work for them, your vision. The guys next door are also in
the same situation. It's actually like a moderately sized company running
parallel production pipelines. This setup is difficult to replicate because
not only do you need the right people, you need the right money, and the right
money and the right people.

Which means to do something similar, you cannot lack _any_ of the points
(wonders how Techstars and Highland are planning). Consider holding events
(remember mydreamapp.com?); gathering a dozen or so beta-stage teams from here
should be enough to throw something noticeable. A gallery kind of function, or
project profile sorting by category and such, might also be good high-priority
tasks. After all, your hosted teams are looking for investors/buyers.

~~~
nostrademons
You mean the "4 main reasons to go with yCombinator" and then listing 5, or
was there something more substantive?

~~~
whacked_new
haha, yes, that; it's a silly mistake to make in writing, which is why I
didn't want to point it out. While trivial, that alone got me wondering how
much you planned out your analysis.

~~~
nostrademons
I wrote it at 3:00 AM. And there initially _were_ only 4 points: I had put
advice & connections together, but realized that advice was important enough
to list separately.

------
vlad
This is a GENIUS site and a great idea because there were 50 votes to the poll
I made "I was rejected by YC but will continue anyway." So, the market is
there.

Since most rejects don't have the contacts and the money or the know-how to
get publicity, but you're going to do the startup anyway, you're missing those
things. So, this is a great way to get publicity and compete on equal ground.

In fact, part of the publicity that YC gets is because "they have 400
applicants and they select the best 10." So, the rejected applicants are
already "being used" for publicity. Why not use YC for publicity? There would
also be no YC without applicants, but there would still be startups. And, I
knew about Paul Graham from Slashdot many years ago, but how many did not
until the YCombinator came about? Again, that wouldn't have happened without
startups.

In other words, if a YC company is getting publicity and you create a similar
product and don't because you're not in YC, is that fair to your product?

Will the name have to change eventually? Of course! But right now, it's a
great idea to ride the YC train and get publicity from the many news outlets
who think YC-funded startups are the only ones worth writing about. There is
no shame in being rejected, and this is going to be great marketing in the
short-term. I think everybody should sign up and participate!

Saying you were "rejected from YC" in the next 6 months will mean a lot to the
blogs and news outlets because it flows with their current articles. Now, 2
years from now, they may not care, but right now, it would be a big deal.

If this is done in a good natured, tongue-in-cheek fashion, this would be a
great hit and a great COMPETITION between YC companies and YC rejects.

------
kyro
I think the general concept of the site is great, but I do think people are
perhaps dwelling on the fact that they got rejected by YC, and are often
talking about the success of their startup with/without YC.

I got rejected like many of you did, but YC and anything YC related isn't
going to influence my success/failure. I'm sure there are myriad of venues to
launch your startup.

YC is one of many many gates that can either close or open, meaning there are
still other doors out there that need to be picked and broken into.

Not everything is so YC influenced.

Good idea, though.

~~~
nostrademons
"I got rejected like many of you did, but YC and anything YC related isn't
going to influence my success/failure. I'm sure there are myriad of venues to
launch your startup."

That was sort of the point of this site - to provide yet another alternative
for launch _and development_ of your startup. The name and logo was intended
to be tongue-in-cheek, taking a rejection and making something good out of it.
After all, it could be read as "NOT rejected from YC"...

Anyways, I'm looking for a new name & positioning. Ideas?

~~~
akkartik
Yup. It didn't go to YC, and I'm not sure it's a startup, but I should have a
website to show people in a day or two.

------
ced
It's silly to focus on your rejection like that. Create a self-assembled group
of startup founders if you will, but don't define it in a negative way.

~~~
nostrademons
Response here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=16316>

------
dfens
I hope you didn't use this idea in your yc application.

~~~
nostrademons
No, this was a side-project inspired after the rejection. I figured that with
at least 50 or so startups continuing their original plans after being turned
down (including us), there might as well be a place where the rest of us can
get the same sort of hacker atmosphere as the yCombinator companies.

------
dpapathanasiou
"Rejected" is a bit harsh; you might want to re-position it along the lines of
"startups not in the YC mold" -- which is all that rejection by YC means (you
don't fit their profile, but that doesn't mean you won't succeed).

Also, lose that red "no"/"anti" logo -- you're not going to get people in the
right mood when they visit (that logo is really for sites looking to rip YC,
which, from what I gather is _not_ your intention).

~~~
nostrademons
I likely will re-brand/re-position it based on feedback here. Different domain
too. Unfortunately, my graphic design skills kinda suck (as I'm sure you
noticed) - my cofounders usually handle that, but this was a bit of a pet
project, and they've been working on our main idea while I tried to get this
out without spending too much time on it.

~~~
dpapathanasiou
Maybe it should be called "WhyCombinator?" -- position it as an open community
of startups which compete (in a serious but friendly manner) to the official
YCombinator companies.

~~~
nostrademons
That's probably better, but I'm thinking it may be better off with a name that
doesn't derive from yCombinator at all. After all, there's YEurope too, which
got similarly panned for ripping off the name.

Unless it were a name with an obscure wordplay in it. For example, we could
call it Ackermen.com because the Y-combinator is a function that lets you
bootstrap recursive functions, while the Ackermann function is one of the
simplest examples of a function that is not primitive recursive. ;-)

~~~
dpapathanasiou
But unlike YEurope, which is just a copy-cat, your source of members (at least
initially) are those whom YC didn't accept.

And in terms of fostering a (again, friendly) rivalry with YC, it's a neat
conceit (especially if any of the YC rejects outshine those that got
accepted).

~~~
nostrademons
So, I was talking with my cofounder, and we came up with Bootstrapacitor.com.
It has "bootstrap" in the name and also has the capacitor connotations of
storing energy and letting it build up until it escapes like a lightning bolt.
Also, there're tons of flux-capacitor jokes we could include (we - meaning the
site users - are collectively inventing the future, after all), and the flux
capacitor is even shaped like a Y!

What do you think?

~~~
dpapathanasiou
Sounds good; remember to announce when it's up and running.

------
markovich
Well, don't forget that it does not really matter anyways:
<http://www.maximusklein.com/2007/04/20/why-ycombinator-is-a-waste-of-time/>

