

Rejected by some incubator? Prove them wrong - jacquesm
http://jacquesmattheij.com/Rejected+by+some+incubator...+Prove+them+wrong.

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tptacek
This post just seems needlessly tendentious.

The job posting you're referring to doesn't simply say "you weren't good
enough for YC, so you should come be one of our employees instead". It says,
"we're a YC company with an executive role open especially for people who took
the initiative to apply to YC."

For a lot of very smart people who applied to YC, this could very well be a
huge win; it's a management team role slot at a company with better-than-
average odds of being interesting a year from now. It's not just another job.

And even if it was, what's wrong with that? It's a job at a startup. If you
applied to YC because you want the startup life, what's wrong with suggesting
you get your hit of it from a company that can pay for health insurance?

If you're living your life waiting to be "accepted into the majors" before
doing anything cool, you're already playing to lose. The people who are going
to succeed with their own companies aren't going to be broken by offers like
this. That mentality is the thing that irritates me most about YC. If getting
"rejected" by YC makes so much of a difference to you that having someone else
even mention it raises your hackles, then you probably ought to be working at
someone else's company anyways.

~~~
jacquesm
> The job posting you're referring to doesn't simply say "you weren't good
> enough for YC, so you should come be one of our employees instead".

The title is literally "Rejected by YC? We want to hire you."

That's about as literal a paraphrasing of "you weren't good enough for YC, so
you should come be one of our employees instead" as you could possibly get.

YC is limited by the amount of start-ups they can mentor, probably not by the
quality of the start-ups themselves and if you are a 'reject' then you should
take it as a learning experience and an opportunity to use any feedback
provided (which YC does very little of). It may simply be that YC filled their
quota and your start-up idea, team and execution so far are just fine.

Those most likely to fit the job description here most likely fit that
category.

~~~
tptacek
Jacques, you are many fine things, but "low drama" isn't one of them (take it
from someone who knows).

"Rejected by YC? We want to hire you." is absolutely not the same sentiment as
"You weren't good enough for YC, so you should come be one of our employees
instead." Full stop.

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mindcrime
Well said, friend. As I said before, I encourage people to adopt the mindset
that "If I get rejected by $FOO, I'll make it so big, that I can buy $FOO and
turn their offices into my ping-pong room."

~~~
hugh3
Or you could take the opportunity to consider whether $FOO was right; perhaps
your idea isn't as good as you think it is.

There's a big difference between having your idea or proposal rejected and
being rejected as a person; it's a useful skill not to get offended at the
former. (Perhaps the latter as well, but that's much more advanced.)

~~~
jacquesm
You can be rejected by YC for many reasons, one possibility is that others
were even better...

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leftnode
In YC's rejection letter, they even say if you go on to success to please let
them know how you did it so they can improve their application process.

Very respectable.

Edit: And the cliché: if one rejection would stop you from continuing with
your startup, you aren't ready to be an entrepreneur.

~~~
tptacek
And, taking an _awesome_ position at another startup _also_ doesn't make you
unready for entrepreneurship.

~~~
jacquesm
It's a surefire way to kill your project though.

~~~
tptacek
What does that even mean? Yes, whatever startup you were going to attempt is
going to die... when you take the full time job that turned out to be more
attractive than starting it.

It's not like going to work for Comcast, dude, and you know it. I don't get
why you're trying to stir this up.

~~~
jacquesm
> I don't get why you're trying to stir this up.

Stirring things is up not the same as having a different opinion on something.
Is this now your default operating mode where you will change every
disagreement in to a personal attack ? Really, I gave some very simple reasons
why I think this is a bad idea, whoever killed the original post apparently
has reasons of their own why they think this is a bad idea (I can think of a
few).

If you get rejected by YC it simply isn't the end of the world and I think
that a 'co-founder wanted' post would have been _MUCH_ more appropriate than
the one with the title the way it was presented.

You can disagree with me on that for various reasons but to accuse me of
trying to 'stir things up' just because you disagree is just another attempt
at an ad-hominem.

Stop doing that.

~~~
tptacek
(Voted you back to 1).

I'm guessing the reason the YC company that posted the ad dead'ed it was
because of posts like yours that picked up the ad and ran it all the way down
the field to the worst possible interpretation of what they were saying.
Personally, again, an offer of an exec role at a profitable YC-backed startup
is basically the exact polar opposite of an insult, and I don't think that's a
quirky way of looking at it.

And, I'm sorry that you don't like the particular ad hominem argument I made,
but: it's a critique I'm going to keep making. Why did you write this post?
Nobody with a viable startup thinks a YC rejection is the end of the world
anyways.

You can have the last word.

~~~
jacquesm
The point is that by making it seem as though being rejected by YC is a valid
reason to start looking for a job misses out on the fact that YC is limiting
the number of applicants that they will accept for a particular batch.

You could be very good, very viable and succeed with or without YC funding
(because, for instance you could get funding elsewhere or because you
bootstrap your way in to a success). Without YC spending a lot more time on
their rejection emails (and I agree that their current rejection letters are
as good as they could be without opening the door to a lot of discussion) you
can not know what their reason was, and especially the more viable ones might
be hit at a time when they are vulnerable (just after being rejected).

Job postings should be level headed and not single out people that have just
been kicked in the nuts at a moment when they're vulnerable by targeting them
directly.

That's putting the other party at a significant disadvantage.

