my options after getting a post interview rejection email..

[georgios22]

How would you navigate my business's current situation?

1) got into an accelerator called Pioneer in July. Didn't have a product when we started. Three cofounders that are all roommates. We used the angel investment to have our best dev go fulltime.

2) Have made steady progress and have had a functional product for the last 8 weeks. It is a quickly built infrastructure tool so it is buggy, unstable, and churn is high. We have had ~50 users, 5 have gotten real value, and 2 use it consistently. The 2 that use it consistently are almost done with their trial period and should convert to paying customers. We have gotten feedback from most of our churned users and it was along the lines of "product doesn't work quick enough and it is unstable". We are fixing those issues as we speak.

3) So we just got the post YC interview rejection email so obviously no $500k of runway. At this current moment we have 3ish months of runway and I'm sitting here debating my best course of action.

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A) Grind it out the next 2 months... increase userbase, make product work better and faster, and patch our leaky bucket THEN try and get pre-seed funding

B) Have our one fulltime dev transition to part-time and pick up a consulting job, address everything in point A (over 6 months instead of 2) and then try for the S24 batch

C) Hunt down some angels to increase runway another 3-6 months then apply to S24 batch

D) Can you get pre-seed funding and also apply to YC but negotiate a smaller financial investment?

E) Deliver a ton of value to a ton of people so we can financially float on our own (the least practical)

Anyways, these are some of the options I'm pondering. Any and all feedback is appreciated

 

[waynemorss]

@georgios22 In 4 months, you launched a functional product and got 50 users with 10% having gotten real value! That's a big deal. There's not enough context to concretely recommend 1 option, but I'd lean towards option A, focus on delivering value to your ~50 users and try to get more traction through word-of-mouth. Also, while your fulltime dev spends time fixing the gaps in the current product, there's nothing stopping you/3rd cofounder from pursuing option #C in parallel - reach out to a ton of people and show them your progress. I think you might be able to raise some more based on your progress. Good luck!

Also, have you figured out why you failed to convince YC? Was it the idea, was it the team, was it something else? That'd help your odds with #C.

 

[georgios22]

@waynemorss Thank you for the feedback, I really like the idea of blending options #A and #C!

The partner feedback we got seemed a little off base, they were concerned about our drop-off in users and us being hesitant to charge for the product in it's current state. I personally felt like we were pretty clear and concise about our churn reasons being primarily technical and us being uncomfortable charging a user for a service that works 70% of the time. I think maybe there might have been a handful of smaller reasons that turned them off but would have been difficult to explain.

Outside of the interview and just talking about the business... I'd say our biggest mistake was going really hard with outbound when we knew the product was littered with bugs. We probably should have been more selective with testers and fleshing the tech out a bit more before sending out a ton of cold outbound.

 

[sloanep]

@georgios22 What is the product?

 

[georgios22]

@sloanep Incredibly simple cluster compute software for python developers. The link is on my profile (not trying to have the mods take this post down because I'm tossing links in here)

 

[romane91]

@georgios22 There’s so many accelerators out there, apply to all of them and keep building and taking to customers

 

[flissy]

@georgios22 Hey may I ask how your experience was in getting to Pioneer. I recently applied and waiting for feedback

 

[georgios22]

@flissy We got lucky, my roommates and I created a few basic websites for different ideas we had. Pioneer came inbound and asked us to chat regarding our cluster compute idea (Burla).

The process was pretty painless 1) Initial 15 minute due diligence 2) Additional 30 minute call with a partner 3) 10 min interview with Daniel Gross

I've found Pioneer to be super useful and the summit was amazing. It was great having to defend my idea constantly, meeting previous Pioneers who have raised, and just bouncing ideas off of other founders.

 

[wonderingwanderer]

@georgios22 What was it like talking to Daniel

 

[georgios22]

@wonderingwanderer Start was basic intro (who we are and team member skills) then the rest of the interview was classic YC style. Fast pace questions

 

[wonderingwanderer]

@georgios22 Daniel gross is a genius

 

[georgios22]

@wonderingwanderer Yeah not going to lie I felt like I projected a ton of nervous energy during the interview and was very worried about the outcome haha. Luckily we got on!

 

[remnant72]

@georgios22 Or apply to other accelerators programs. There are over 100 accelerators giving $100K and above.

 

[georgios22]

@remnant72 Definitely, what are some of the top ones you'd recommend? I think we are a month or two away from raising a pre-seed so that is why I've been a little hesitant applying to accelerators (outside of YC because prestige, experience, and $500k)

 

[remnant72]

@georgios22 Techstars, muckerlab etc if you feel like you can raise a pre seed soon then wait it out