No interview w VC funding. Just some thoughts

[athist]

Rejected w no interview. VC funding, 10+ years industry experience, $15K MRR while in stealth (MVP launched two months ago), killer team, strong advisors, and 4 alum referrals. Checked the application by a few alum who all agreed it was very strong.

It definitely bites, but just know there are many ways to grow your company.

If your product is great, your customers won’t care if you did YC. Time to continue building and do what’s next.

Just posting this for myself, but also for those who feel that this has to be their path or that they needed this. It isn’t and you never do. I know of two cases of recent YC rejects (past 2 years) who raised $100M and $60M.

YC is definitely cool but ignore the noise. At the very early stages, it’s just important to find a few investors and advisors who truly believe in you. The rest will just compound with good product and decent sales/marketing.

 

[ccallagh]

@athist First application:

Week 1 of founding, idea stage; conceptual demo of product, we were top 10%

Second application for S23 cohort;

We signed a dozen LOIs with leading companies in the industry, built a prototype, raised pre seed, and had 5 recommendations by YC alumni; not even top 10%

I am really wondering sometimes how this works.

 

[athist]

@ccallagh Their loss. Best of luck!!

 

[rethink88]

@athist What is your product?

 

[athist]

@rethink88 Fully automated sales and marketing for service businesses. App actively “learns” about businesses to create and distribute hyper-personalized content.

Idea is that if you’re good at your job, you should have good marketing. Those shouldn’t be two different things. We’re only doing direct sales right now.

 

[gail1954]

@athist This sounds really interesting - can you tell us more about the product?

 

[psalm9one]

@athist I think rejection reason could be why stealth? How long you all are going operate like that?

YC could wait and see where you all go next in 3-6 months… next batch …

 

[athist]

@psalm9one That’s a great point, it could be. We’re in stealth until our full product goes out of beta in the next few weeks.

 

[psalm9one]

@athist Stealth and NDA does not work for most of the investor unless until there is a real reason… most of the time it is none. I would suggest open it up it doesn’t hurt anything including competitors…

 

[athist]

@psalm9one I completely agree. In this case though our sales are direct, have CS onboarding, and are launching our full product next week. So we’re still a tad careful about choosing users. So opening it up probably wouldn’t directly help just yet.

 

[christianauger]

@psalm9one

YC could wait and see where you all go next in 3-6 months… next batch …

YC routinely funds groups that go no where. I personally know one group that only put up 3 Medium blog posts for the entire duration they were doing YC. Heard / know of more similar stories.

In light of that, someone with a serious enough business setup isn't even getting an interview... I mean, that's just bad luck. Also, YC attracts a lot of groups that they'd want to fund, but can't / won't.

 

[veyhenlo]

@athist Definitely odd but curious why you applied? Sounds like you have the team, the revenue, and the funding down.

 

[athist]

@veyhenlo We’re still raising, and hoped YC would act as a catalyst to get more institutions/people in. We were also hoping the YC logo would help us attract even better talent earlier, especially technical talent.

 

[royalpriestess]

@athist Point to note: same person cannot review all 23K applications. Hence there is wild divergence in how the apps are evaluated. A growth opportunity for YC for sure. Is anyone listening ?

 

[violetinchrist]

@royalpriestess It must be that. Or a really bad algorithm. Not complaining, but yeah seems like a great opportunity for growth.

 

[juie]

@athist YC is just A gatekeeper to VCs. Nothing less, nothing more. If you can connect directly with VCs and people in your industry. You do not need YC

 

[violetinchrist]

@juie Agreed. Also, it's important to note that it's a gatekeeper for conversations with VCs, not VC money itself (might be obvious, but feels like it's important to note the difference). I've seen quite a few YC companies that don't raise VC money after YC.

 

[endalldisease]

@athist Weird just got an interview pre revenue with no experience since I'm attending community college full time

 

[athist]

@endalldisease You got this.

 

[radio1111]

@endalldisease what's your problem bro this guys attending a UC and has two FAANG internships, why do you go around telling people you have no experience and attend cc?