ineedjesus7
New member
We have entered the last week of hearing back from YC and I am getting cold feet -- for pretty good reasons!
We are a team of 4 serial entrepreneurs who submitted our application on the last day for S23. Our idea is an obvious generative AI wrapper for B2B sales, which currently operates as a productised service. We started in late March and got our first revenue (a few thousand dollars) from our first couple of clients in the beginning of May so we updated our application with the latest progress last week.
After reading every post on r/ycombinator I am fairly certain that our idea is too generic and indistinguishable from rejected S23 applications and already funded S22 and W23 startups. I therefore wrote an email to apply@yc last week to ask if we could retract and submit a new application or whether they would advise against it given our traction and late hour for the summer batch.
Two of us already interviewed with YC for another idea a year ago. Our new idea is less obvious than our current, still has good founder fit and remains within the AI space but no traction or customer interviews. It would qualify as a hard pivot but nevertheless we have fairly strong conviction because it is a felt problem.
Should we retract our current application and submit a new one which is arguably a more promising YC case or are we better off sticking to our guns with the existing application which makes money but is in a super red ocean competition-wise?
Something like 52% of funded startups get in with just an idea but I would like to know your thoughts on whether we would still be in consideration for the current batch with a resubmission this late. As I understand, YC is a bit underwater from a high amount of applications this batch. My worry is they won't get to new submissions.
We are a team of 4 serial entrepreneurs who submitted our application on the last day for S23. Our idea is an obvious generative AI wrapper for B2B sales, which currently operates as a productised service. We started in late March and got our first revenue (a few thousand dollars) from our first couple of clients in the beginning of May so we updated our application with the latest progress last week.
After reading every post on r/ycombinator I am fairly certain that our idea is too generic and indistinguishable from rejected S23 applications and already funded S22 and W23 startups. I therefore wrote an email to apply@yc last week to ask if we could retract and submit a new application or whether they would advise against it given our traction and late hour for the summer batch.
Two of us already interviewed with YC for another idea a year ago. Our new idea is less obvious than our current, still has good founder fit and remains within the AI space but no traction or customer interviews. It would qualify as a hard pivot but nevertheless we have fairly strong conviction because it is a felt problem.
Should we retract our current application and submit a new one which is arguably a more promising YC case or are we better off sticking to our guns with the existing application which makes money but is in a super red ocean competition-wise?
Something like 52% of funded startups get in with just an idea but I would like to know your thoughts on whether we would still be in consideration for the current batch with a resubmission this late. As I understand, YC is a bit underwater from a high amount of applications this batch. My worry is they won't get to new submissions.