Y Combinator is not for the little guy anymore. (Or never been?)

[joshuahannan]

@zedrick I know what it feels like to be a little guy. Some of us don't have a rich uncle, some of us don't have any funds saved anywhere, and some of us don't even have anyone who believes in us. And yet we are chasing our dreams of running a startup. For most of us, YC gave us hope to chase our dreams. That indeed there is someone who cares. I understand it's painful It's hard I understand but YC IS YC... They are running a business.

 

[meki]

@zedrick Okay, just to be clear, while a YC Start-Up School is awesome and worth more than the investment. YC is a VC - they are INVESTING in start-ups.

It's easy to think that they are here to cheer everyone on, but they are investors. Period.

That should help you with your experience - you pitched anonymously a VC and did not get accepted (although I think they are still processing).

The feedback you get from YC will be immensely helpful in finding your way forward.

 

[grlpower]

@meki Feedback is only given if you have an interview now. Applications rejected right away do not lead to feedback. Just giving the info incase anyone is reading. Not saying you're wrong on the above.

 

[calmnow]

@meki what feedback from YC? They don't give feedbacks.

 

[bigoink]

@zedrick There is an unbelievable amount of pessimism in this post and comment.

What you don’t know is the % of people who apply who have those credentials.

I got into YC, no education, not California/nyc US location. Immigrant.

And you know companies do get in.

Is it not also true that because YC is based in California more people apply from California because doing YC is far less of a burden?

Is it also not true that California has a high % of the text talent in the us? And culturally the Bay Area is more encouraging of startups.

Stop seeing this as a probability thing. Just because they get 20k applicants, and accept 200 doesn’t make your chances 1%.

Everything you do affects your chances. Your application, your interview.

Now, if you’re product/ founder alignment is off, fix that.

If you explained what you’re building poorly, fix that.

YC has a sense for founders who are looking for someone to blame when things go wrong. And those aren’t the founders they want. Because founders who push and push for solutions don’t have time to work out the 100s of ways this isn’t their fault.

You don’t even know if you’ve been rejected yet.

Be more optimistic. In general I mean.

Review your application, do you come across pessimistic in that. Do you say your $10bn rev competitor is shit?

 

[zedrick]

@bigoink YC is all about “build something people want” but that’s false. Most of the products in this batch don’t have something people want. At least not yet.

Let’s see how the current batch unfolds, maybe the first 9 accepted ones are the most impressive.

But could it be the case that YC used to be more inclusive, but this batch went all in on prestige as a selection metric?

 

[bigoink]

@zedrick We’ve seen 9 companies from this batch.

Over half the batch has likely been accepted.

Is there another correlation that might lead to an early bias?

Former founders know to launch early?

People who went to prestigious colleges have more confidence in putting themselves out there?

The more successful/prestigious founder-startups are louder?

You choose when you make it on the directory publicly.

The batch hasn’t officially kicked off yet.

 

[tomorrow]

@zedrick You are neither right nor wrong, but you lack perspective.
Rejection may be a the good thing. You will either find yourself in something you actually want to do or build a great company.

 

[bigoink]

@tomorrow Not sure I agree. Rejection without feedback is a tiny piece of information. Everything that follows (working on the clarity of your idea/comms, understanding if the idea is worth working on) you can do before you get rejected.

 

[tomorrow]

@bigoink Undoubtedly. But there may be more rejections like this. To the level when you start being thankful for a quick no. Because what really matters is objective progress and velocity. Because every day you don't grow, you shrink. And 10 quick NO's will save you months of runway versus 2 long maybes.

 

[bigoink]

@tomorrow Ahh, yes I agree. Get used to rejection.

 

[tomorrow]

@bigoink But also the feedback. The only feedback which matters is the feedback from customers.

Why would you care about feedback from someone who looked for 3-5 min at a messy application of another great idea #5xxx? They may not have the problem you are solving, they haven’t seen (most likely) nor used (almost certainly) your product, they don’t know you nor anyone who could know you, and if you are not invited to the interview - they may not have fully understood the idea either or simply didn’t find it attractive as an investment (which is kinda your fault as the duty of messaging is always on communicator before it is on a listener).

So what feedback can they give that you would care about? “your idea rocks but sorry, try next time” ? Well, you’ll get that mail tomorrow anyhow. It’s just another endless VC application screening day for them, they might not even remember your idea or application.

Maybe by w24 they will get chatgpt to do it but then you def don’t want the feedback

—

“You” is used as a figure of speech, not you personally

 

[calmnow]

@bigoink you probably offered a unique solution that no other ivy leaguers did. If it happened another team with ivy leagues credentials applied, you won't be writing this post.

 

[bigoink]

@calmnow I know for a fact that’s not true.

 

[calmnow]

@bigoink well, it happened to me so it squashes your perception of what is true or fact.

And besides, only 12% of founders are female is proof YC is full of fake altruism.

 

[masterpiece]

@zedrick Well YC is a guise of prestige to do the unprestigious things of being an early-stage founder. When all of your peers are analysts at a major big bank or FAANG engineers, it's not so sexy to be basically unemployed to pursue something that will most likely utterly fail.

I guess the interpretation that they're for "the little guys" is more so that there's a nonzero chance for you to get in if you don't have certain traditional societal markers like having gone to a particular set of schools. There are many accepted and successful founders like that. But ultimately they're still in it to make money, and they still need indicators that success is possible, and prestige plays a big role in that.

 

[mergeahead1990]

@zedrick Certain types of folks choose to announce earlier than others as they get more attention and inbound from investors. Given the background of these 9, it's no wonder they've announced early as they are likely just using YC as a way to fundraise (they don't ned to help otherwise)

at this point)

Certain types of folks choose to announce earlier than others as they get more attention and inbound from investors. Given the background of these 9, it's no wonder they've announced early as they have - they are likely just using YC as a way to fundraise (they don't need to help otherwise)

I say this because there's some serious selection bias in these 9 and it's not indicative of the true demographics of the batch. Half our batch (W21) were based internationally.

 

[gospelinmusic]

@zedrick If you were the one choosing, why should you reject them and accept yourself instead?

When choosing the players to compete in the Olympics, you will not choose someone with potential in the minor leagues when there are so many choices in the major leagues.

Can you confidently say you are better than the other 20,000 startups that also failed to get in?

 

[grlpower]

@gospelinmusic YC's cache has frankly declined for anyone who isn't pre-revenue as the finances of the deal don't make sense in most cases. On top of this, the quality of their later "top company" outliers has drastically declined as application pool has gone up. It's just harder to allocate checks to less than 1% of applicants in a pool of 20,000. If anything, it's speaking to changes necessary to the YC model as they have scaled. Is it network based and inherently biased? Absolutely yes. Speaking as someone who has gotten in, gotten rejected, and been hired to fix absolute messes at some of the companies YC considers top performers. Their rate of success and return will decline.

 

[ejohnson]

@zedrick If anyone from Andromeda is reading this, your analogy makes no sense. “Nintendo of surgery”? Open platform? Have you ever played games? Nintendo basically just has first party games on their consoles.