Background: US based solo founder, No Ivy, no daddy’s silver spoon, no frat. Just cold hard work day and night to make my product and success.
The situation started when I applied YC application for S24, application asked me a lot of critical questions which I had to research, I filled up the application made a video and decided to apply to all the accelerators and investors in the USA. Found a list online and applied to each one of them.
Here is what I learned within 1 month:
1. My knowledge of exactly what I want in my product increased
2. Investors ask difficult questions regarding your product, PMF, GTM, Profitability, why this when that… questions which will make you stop in the middle of your pitch and make you think. I was able to dial those questions to the T with each application.
3. Became more ruthless in my answers and deterministic. That’s because I was not copy pasting my answers from previous applications, Each application new answers, same question. This way I know which applications got selected and what answers they liked.
4. Pitch deck became bulletproof! Since I was able to answer these questions well in the applications I got a much better clarity on the pitch deck and how to distill my product into simple words.
5. Beating the odds, I figured that since I don’t have the college pedigree and location of California, I needed to create my own luck. So I extended my time horizon and played the long game of applying to every single place possible, I even applied to investors who invest in health startups only, and mine is in cyber/ai.
6. Rejection Principle: Something which I have been toying with, if one needs to have a thick skin to endure the startup and business world one needs to invest in rejection, a lot of them. Since my startup is close to my heart, the rejections hit harder. Each time I get an email that my application was rejected I take it with a smile because I will have an epic story to tell that I got rejected from 299 investors only 1 selected me.
7. Shortcut to incubator knowledge: I truly believe that with these applications (200 more to reach my 500 goal) and googling my way into business concepts I will be able to improve my knowledge of what they will eventually teach me in YC.
8. This is just me: I wrote down each question and its answer in a notion database for each application, fed this information to a personal GPT so I can ask any question in the future and it will curate an answer to me easily. Also helps my team and new engineers know our product better.
9. YOU and your BUSINESS is the product and all these investors and accelerators are betting on you not the other way around. Don’t lose your power in the market
Edit 1: Yes we have an actual MVP and demo in works and about to launch for limited beta. Yes We have had validation from 3 CISOs who are interested in the demo and if all promises are valid they will entertain a deal and yes I work 80 hours weekly as I’m a tech founder on my business with a team of 2 engineers while applying for 300 applications.
Edit 2: Since a lot of you have DMed me for the list here it is: https://www.failory.com/startups/united-states-accelerators-incubators
To everyone who is in this race, remember you are doing a much better job than 99% of the world. If you just have an idea, execute it, build something that you can truely call yours. Competition is good but try to compete in mission and vision not product similarity, because they can copy your product but cannot outrun your vision for years.
If interested in connecting I can share my LinkedIn. Don’t know if it’s against the rules.
The situation started when I applied YC application for S24, application asked me a lot of critical questions which I had to research, I filled up the application made a video and decided to apply to all the accelerators and investors in the USA. Found a list online and applied to each one of them.
Here is what I learned within 1 month:
1. My knowledge of exactly what I want in my product increased
2. Investors ask difficult questions regarding your product, PMF, GTM, Profitability, why this when that… questions which will make you stop in the middle of your pitch and make you think. I was able to dial those questions to the T with each application.
3. Became more ruthless in my answers and deterministic. That’s because I was not copy pasting my answers from previous applications, Each application new answers, same question. This way I know which applications got selected and what answers they liked.
4. Pitch deck became bulletproof! Since I was able to answer these questions well in the applications I got a much better clarity on the pitch deck and how to distill my product into simple words.
5. Beating the odds, I figured that since I don’t have the college pedigree and location of California, I needed to create my own luck. So I extended my time horizon and played the long game of applying to every single place possible, I even applied to investors who invest in health startups only, and mine is in cyber/ai.
6. Rejection Principle: Something which I have been toying with, if one needs to have a thick skin to endure the startup and business world one needs to invest in rejection, a lot of them. Since my startup is close to my heart, the rejections hit harder. Each time I get an email that my application was rejected I take it with a smile because I will have an epic story to tell that I got rejected from 299 investors only 1 selected me.
7. Shortcut to incubator knowledge: I truly believe that with these applications (200 more to reach my 500 goal) and googling my way into business concepts I will be able to improve my knowledge of what they will eventually teach me in YC.
8. This is just me: I wrote down each question and its answer in a notion database for each application, fed this information to a personal GPT so I can ask any question in the future and it will curate an answer to me easily. Also helps my team and new engineers know our product better.
9. YOU and your BUSINESS is the product and all these investors and accelerators are betting on you not the other way around. Don’t lose your power in the market
Edit 1: Yes we have an actual MVP and demo in works and about to launch for limited beta. Yes We have had validation from 3 CISOs who are interested in the demo and if all promises are valid they will entertain a deal and yes I work 80 hours weekly as I’m a tech founder on my business with a team of 2 engineers while applying for 300 applications.
Edit 2: Since a lot of you have DMed me for the list here it is: https://www.failory.com/startups/united-states-accelerators-incubators
To everyone who is in this race, remember you are doing a much better job than 99% of the world. If you just have an idea, execute it, build something that you can truely call yours. Competition is good but try to compete in mission and vision not product similarity, because they can copy your product but cannot outrun your vision for years.
If interested in connecting I can share my LinkedIn. Don’t know if it’s against the rules.