There were too many reasons against me in my application. The idea is weak, poorly explained, no demo, etc. My cofounder also dropped out on me after we submitted the application so I would have had to disclose that I'm now a single founder which would have guaranteed rejection. Never mind, on to plan B.
1.) Every alpha test should have an easily acceptable "Feedback" link in the layout. I know you've got "Contact Us" on the about page, but most people won't look that far (I wouldn't have had someone not commented about ads on the About page). Feedback is for your benefit, not really your users, so users will not jump through hoops to give it to you.
2.) The front page is too cluttered. A lot of sites try to give a taste of every bit of functionality on the front page, but it doesn't work well. Which do you go to: Google or Yahoo? Why did AltaVista die (hint: it had something to do with "portal")? I'd take the Most Active and Last Registered users off the front page and onto a separate "Stats" page.
3.) You need to display more than a couple sentences of each story in the summary. Typically, readers decide whether they'll read a book after the first 2 paragraphs or so (that's an oft-quoted statistic from the dead-tree publishing world). I'd display about that much, and avoid cutting stories off in mid-sentence.
4.) The language links should also filter the stories visible to a casual browser. I can't read Italian, and so have no interest in Italian stories. Also, duplicate the language links on the story box itself. I was looking for some way to filter the languages and didn't see any until my eyes moved up to the top left corner.
Thanks for the feedback.
Good advice, definitetly.
The only problem is about the language filter: we already thought about it, but now we have only one story in english, so you wouldn't have seen anything. This is one of the first things we'll fix in the next days.
Dont feel bad, but the fact that novlet.com got rejected looks like a right decision. The home page has only a small block of usable information [Top stories section ]. Everything else is just space fillers.
Last registered users, Top usrs.. are all sections that should become prominent once the community gets strong.To let the section take a major portion of page doesnt make sense at this point of time .
Yes its an alpha, but when you do alpha,you should be DOING alpha.
Not that you guys have done a bad job, but the site gives an impression that it was cooked up without developers themself having no genuine interest in the site.
Please dont get discouraged even a little bit..Keep working with an open , positive mind. Best of everything to you . :)
The only thing that makes us feel bad is the impression that we developed it without interest. We built novlet in our spare time while graduating, so we couldn't spend the time we would have liked to, however we were very interested in the project and it's a pity that it doesn't seem so.
The site was initially meant mainly as a proof that we could work togheter, but it would be great to work on it full time, but apparently they didn't even look at it.
We are not discouraged, it would have been a fantastic experience.
We'll keep on working.
Actually, during PG's talk at UC Berkeley ( where I go to school ), I went up and asked him if a demo is important..etc and he advised me to put up a screencast instead, so we did that. I don't know if they actually viewed it because I can't tell from the server logs.
Well it seems it did not play a huge role either way. In my opinion a demo or a prototype is a huge advantage in getting across an idea. At the same time we were reluctant to show ours this early in the process. Anyway goodluck to those who made it. Maybe I will see you at some of the Boston web meetups.
we didn't make it. Maybe it was because we didn't get that prototype online.
I seriously might go over to JoyEnt and kill all those lousy bastards ;-) We were promised our new server repeatedly the next day for two weeks now, believed in it and didn't just put that damn thing online on an improvised dyndns box. Big fault, I suppose... :(
does anyone want to share a hotel room for Saturday and Sunday night? Conversely, if anyone wants to house a Ycombinator interviewee for two nights, I would be eternally in their debt.
I have to admit I am a little unclear on one point: Does everyone who applied get emailed or just the ones accepted to the interviews? I would hate to be waiting for something that will never come.
Darn you, Godot! You wasted two hours of my life! :-)
I've got a Sieve script running on my IMAP server, set to redirect to my phone any message from an address containing any of the strings "pg@", "tlb@", "rtm@", "x@", or
"ycombinator".
I also have my email here set to a subaddress, which is also included in the above forward. Points to anyone who understands Sieve semantics well enough to predict whether the message will get matched and redirected twice.
Hold up Hold up! The data will travel straight to Seattle first before getting re-routed! So even if you guys are 100ms away ... the data pipes are facing in my direction :-D
I've got you beat. I built a robot last night (runs on Lisp and parts from Radio Shack) that constantly monitors the internet, my phone lines and packets going out of YC's office. As soon as my robot picks up a signal of interest it beams the messages directly to my HUD that I've been wearing ever since I sent my app in.
Hurray for over-engineered solutions! While you're at it, though, you might as well just have your robot slip inside YC and grab a copy of Arc--then it wouldn't just be Lisp, it would be Hundred Year Lisp!
Rejection the best motivator? or is it just me? The passion to prove yourself and your ideas is more motivating than acceptance.
Anyway we have some extra office space available to share with all you future ycombinator startups that will be locating in boston for the summer. We are located in davis square minutes from harvard sqaure in cambridge. We have been there for 4 months now and have 2-3 desks to spare. You can see pics at dreamvex.com (our soon to be designed blog).
If anyone is interested when you move to the city, you can email me at todd at dreamvex.com
For American teams who got interviews and need to fly to Silicon Valley: Southwest has a sale that includes flights to San Jose. Sample fare: $79 each way from Seattle to San Jose. Here: http://www.southwest.com/hotfares/hotfares2.html
You'll need to book before Thursday midnight (now is that midnight between Thursday and Friday, or...?).
Got a thumbs-up @5pm EST. It was a generic msg, sent to a suppressed mailing list. knewjax, we did not provide a demo or prototype. We did, however, spend quite a bit of time in writing a detailed reply to a question pg sent by email about 5 days ago.
I read someone recently refer to startups as the NBA of high-tech (luring kids away from college). If that's the case, does that make this draft day? It would appear to have some of the feel.
