YC Rejects — A community of rejected YC companies

@awt I like how you're turning something negative into something positive. Disappointment is an inevitablity in the startup / entrepreneur journey and with a community like this, people can learn from their experiences to improve in future. It would be cool if the learnings were turned into content available for the public who want to apply in future and leverage the advice.

@awt @abadesi Definitely a good idea Abadesi. Maybe even interviews or other type of content revolving around the potential reasons of the rejection. That'd be invaluable for a lot of starters.

@abadesi thanks for the advice!! that's a really good idea to share learnings with everyone and we will look at ways to do that!

@thomaswang thanks for submitting your company! okay, here is the direct link to the YC group: https://seedproof.com/yc2018/

@thomaswang as far as the dashboard, it should show everything you submitted or voted on. What are you meaning by non-responsive? Perhaps something is not working correctly! my apologies for such an inconvenience...

@davidjlowe haha you might need to! But absolutely, you can be part of the community. Please do! you actually don't even have to login to see other ideas, but to see the YC rejects you can use SM to signin here: https://seedproof.com/global/login/

@awt Thanks Andrew. I just registered but got a blank page. Tried reloading and nothing. Can you help?

@davidjlowe that's no good. I checked and the site is up right now. If you have a screenshot I'd love to see but i can't seem to recreate the problem. sorry for the hassle! here is the link to the YC group page: https://seedproof.com/yc2018/ or to the main feed here: https://seedproof.com

@davidjlowe my apologies again, this is supposed to work correctly, especially when you list on PH :)

@davidjlowe ok, glad to hear

@aurorakb thanks for the feedback! Yes, I definitely want to add groups for all batches and find out more about the stories of each company! The goal was to get this started around the time that Summer 18 rejection emails came out, and then build on it from there. Thanks for checking it out and leaving the advice!!

@vkarhail awesome, thanks for checking it out!

@digitaldarwin thanks for that...really appreciate it. After seeing the response today I'm thinking of more ways to make this valuable.

@awt Ironically I got my YC rejection email today. I was initially disappointed until I looked at my YC App Video stats on Youtube only discover that they didn't even watch the video in considering my application. https://cl.ly/2d3c232n1e0L

@digitaldarwin that's a bummer. Ya, it seems they have so many applications that many of the good ones get lost in the mix. It made sense to have a group where people can get together and help each other, because rejection from YC doesn't mean a bunch of people thought it was a bad company - it likely means they didn't have time to get to the application

@digitaldarwin you're absolutely right! Representing an accelerator, though, I can tell you that one of the main reasons for this is that it does more harm than good for the accelerators. Giving entrepreneurs "negative feedback" is a really fast way to make lots of enemies due to the fact that so much of a founder's identity is tied up in how well their startup is doing. An accelerator benefits more from making lots of friends with everyone in the ecosystem than by starting thousands of petty fights and never-ending threads that go back and forth with founders justifying themselves. Only SOME founders take the feedback and work to improve. MOST just want to convince you that you just don't get it or that you're too cautious with risk or that you should give someone the benefit of the doubt etc etc. Accelerators really just benefit from throwing fish back in the ocean and not picking a fight.

@juannikin That's a really good point and I can't really see how it could be overcome. But there is some inequality in the exchange where most applicants probably spend hours or days preparing their application and they get nothing back but a form email. It seems to me that the Accelerators are flooded with applicants and do their best to skim over applications; probably spending less than a few seconds on each one that is initially rejected (e.g. didn't even watch the overview video). But the inequality could be overcome with a simple "5 things that we would recommend you address" feedback loop. It could even be canned responses but thoughtfully written. That way the reviewer could check off a few concerns and the email would include some context for why it wasn't a fit for the accelerator. That wouldn't start a feedback loop but it would probably anger the immature entrepreneurs. So I guess that's where @awt has an opening.

@kajmagnus thanks for the nice words!! yes, absolutely. The YC group is semi-private but all you have to do is sign in with email/password or your social media: https://seedproof.com/global/login/

@awt Thanks! I just joined. (The comment reply email, for your comment, got placed in the Promotions Gmail tab so I didn't see it until now)

@kajmagnus aw ok, perfect...still trying to add features to Seedproof and grow the founder community. so thanks for being patient with that :)

@cloudlight hey, thanks for signing up!! yes, some characters aren't allowed but we should do a better job of clarifying that so it's obvious...some are actually allowed (e.g. * or # will be fine). Thanks for pointing out the confusion!

@milesbflorence ha ya I was actually a bit surprised at how big the response was!

@filip_zajac I agree. I'm working on a couple possibilities. do you have any ideas?

@filip_zajac yes, great ideas. I've been talking to investors this past week about how that arrangement could work.

@danerobert haha nice. but no I highly doubt that will happen! thanks for message.

@adv4nced right on, make sure to list it here: https://seedproof.com/secure/new...

@adv4nced well, that's awkward. Would you mind sending a screenshot to hq@seedproof.com so we can take a look? I just tried the registration and it worked okay so I'm not sure what's going on.

@adv4nced btw, were you using Signin with FB or your own account?

@adv4nced Did you launch a Kickstarter for this? I'd give that a shot before applying to YC. If you get solid traction on Kickstarter, it's going to be much easier to get into YC.

@mike_seekwell nope, don't think we need "preorders" now. I'm convinced that rejection from YC is not stopping us in any way, we are already starting getting traction bootstrapping... the landing page has a very high conversion rate itself! Thanks a lot for the suggestion. Ah! and we didn't submit it to product hunt yet. If you liked the project yourself, maybe you can even submit it yourself, so it's less lame of me! ;) What do you say?

@agweber awesome, thanks for the shoutout!

@rvlada thank you!