Vote up if you're rejected but will still proceed

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11551

by vlad • 19 years ago

50 62 19 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

mukund4• 19 years ago

We have been telling this from first, YC or not, we will go for it. We are still in the race to make it happen and go live

amichail3• 19 years ago

I think it's important to be flexible though. If an idea does not seem to be getting much traction, you might consider moving on to your next idea.

mukund4• 19 years ago

Not really dude, we believe that wasnt the criteria for rejection. We believe in our idea and we will implement that and will go live. Then we will do a soul search depending on how the world reacts

jward• 19 years ago

Reddit has made me wary of vote polls, so I won't vote up. But we are still going to do our thing. I'm looking at the silver lining of not getting in. Moving really sucks ;)

vlad8• 19 years ago

Well, I voted you up even though I disagree with your belief about not voting up.

dfranke2• 19 years ago

I'm not sure. Without someone to pay my living expenses, I can't work on it full time. So I'm deciding between moonlighting it, or taking a job with another startup.

felipe• 19 years ago

Yes, you can! Save enough for six months to a year in basic living expenses -- that's your seed fund. While you save, keep moonlighting on your project. Your seed-fund will empower you to make the right decision when the time comes (i. e.: When your project gets traction). And you can always do consulting gigs if you need more money.

dfranke2• 19 years ago

Well, I just finished working out the terms of the job offer from said other startup and I'm insufferably pleased with my negotiating :-). I probably won't have time for side-projects while I'm there, but even if I don't get rich with them I'll probably walk away with enough savings to set out on my own afterwards.

jason132• 19 years ago

Did y combinator even take much of a look at the demo's?

theoutlander3• 19 years ago

No, I think they have been very busy ... besides, the idea has to sound promising to waste time looking at a demo...

IMorgothI122• 19 years ago

They looked at my demo. I still got rejected thought. A better question is how many demos they looked at that still got rejected.

neurokinetikz• 19 years ago

today was an odd day ...

it started out with my site (neurokinetikz.com) winning a webby award

http://webbyawards.com/webbys/current_honorees.php?category_id=48

and then ended with a rejection email from YC

odd indeed ...

c'est la vie ;)

nickb• 19 years ago

I spent a couple dozen seconds on your site and had no clue what it was about. You need to focus your pitch and make it more obvious for "old" folks like myself. You lost me as a viewer very quickly.

PS: Lose the obnoxious, animated, poorly incorporated wrt background color GIFs... they gave me a headache.

PPS: Also, lose the first page: you'll get better SEO results & it won't look like it's 1997. ;)

eskaper• 19 years ago

we didn't get in but will keep going; the only frustrating part of our rejection is that ycomb didn't even look at our demo (they would have had to login to do so).

jason132• 19 years ago

Our team had a similar experience. It seems they didnt even look at the parts which didnt require logging in.

omouse• 19 years ago

This is an easy problem to correct. Have a link that POSTs the demo login (or whatever) and tosses the user in directly instead of requiring the user to type in demo twice.

Or is that what you did?

Leonidas2• 19 years ago

The rejection from Y did hurt for a few minutes but then it is actually a blessing. It helped our team to re-evaluate ourselves. Our background is in medicine. We lack the technology part yet understand the 'gaps' in medicine that technology is needed. It's like Steve Case and his dive into medicine with revolutionhealth.

Anyways, going to give it a go for another program but this time using our strength - medicine. Any hacker out there want to give it a shot with us in the other program application, we have some great ideas that combines the internet, medicine, health insurance etc. Tired of hiring programmers, we need a real partner who can program since my programming ability is still newbish.

Give me an e-mail ;)

theoutlander3• 19 years ago

ping me - theoutlander at gmail ... i dont have urs

brezina2• 19 years ago

Hi guys. Sorry about the news.

I suggest joining my YC alum startup, Xobni, instead. Sometimes great hackers joinup instead of startup. That is what Paul Buchheit did : http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/03/looking-for-co-founder-try-attending.html

send resumes: http://www.xobni.com/jobs.php

vlad8• 19 years ago

People here have voted to continue to work on their startup and there's nothing to be sorry about.

That is probably a great job opportunity, but not the same as starting up your own business. A lot of companies (like Xobni) take years to get up and running, and that's doing it full-time. How can somebody expect to do a startup while working 40 hours a week for somebody else without putting in the full-time hours?

Finally, I don't know if you want to hire people who have entrepreneurship in the back of their mind, 24/7. What do you think? Or, do you think it would be good to have entrepreneurial minded employees? Thanks!

philc2• 19 years ago

I don't think you'd join something like Xobni and also do a startup on the side; Matt didn't mean that. The point of joining a startup this early is that it becomes your startup. Same concept as finding someone who's already tackling the same problem you were planning to, and joining up.

"Job opportunities" usually give Benefits and Work-life Balance. Xobni would give you (hopefully) lucrative equity and the sprint-or-die startup pace that most people here are looking for (along with the rewards that come with it).

dhouston3• 19 years ago

let me +1 this post.. adam and matt are not only damn smart but awesome guys (i worked out of their living room last summer and we had a great time.) xobni's on a fantastic trajectory and this is a rare opportunity for a smart hacker to get in early -- definitely check them out.

vlad8• 19 years ago

Just curious. Why did you apply to YC, then? And, would you've abandoned DropBox and started at Xobni, had YC rejected you? Thanks!

budu33• 19 years ago

I did send my resume some time back. The least you guys could have done was to send me a regret letter.

hello_moto• 19 years ago

Sorry I couldn't resist to reply. I just checked xobni job page and was surprised that they're looking for someone with C# knowledge. I assume they're building something based on ASP.NET ? (or at least .NET technology)

So right now the list of startup companies that use .NET has grown to 2 in YCombinator? Xobni and Loopt (arguably one of the most successful YCombinator investment).

PG, any thought on that?

budu33• 19 years ago

As far a languages go, there's no silver bullet, go with whatever your team is comfortable with.

philc2• 19 years ago

And consider that they their products thus far are outlook-based. MS does a lot of the work for you if you use their tools and language.

xinroman• 19 years ago

For us, this was just a small step towards seeking out more funding. While it would have been faster and easier to develop and launch with some money coming in (read, one less contract job necessary to get through the summer) that's no reason not to do it anymore.

rbc• 19 years ago

My business partner and I applied back in the spring of 2005 and were passed over. It wasn't all that surprising to me, based on the number of applicants that the SFP had received.

In retrospect I'm a little relieved. At the time, our company was not really in the state to make a run for a M&A or IPO exit, nor did it need to. It was only after doing more research that I realized that our company mostly needed customers, not investors.

We've spent the last two years setting up the necessary infrastructure for us to support our customers. It looks like 2007 may be our year. It's been two years and we are still proceeding.

shsung• 19 years ago

We submitted way late - literally last minute - but we'll still be proceeding. It's okay, since we thought up of a few more interesting ideas, and a few that would be easier to start first before working on our really big ambitious one. It's amazing how many ideas you can come up when you really sit down and think about it.

vlad8• 19 years ago

I just want to say that there are as many comments as there are votes. This is great! I think we have likely exceeded the number of teams which will have been selected at the end. Those just starting now have months of time to get going. Let's have tons of demos up by June 1st, when YC probably starts!

Leonidas2• 19 years ago

We should have a section to list demos that are up or going to be up so that we can support one another.

Maybe someone can put up something that the audience on here can go on and evaluate what everyone is doing. Perhaps make it 'invite' only to avoid trolls.

whacked_new4• 19 years ago

Just to share a little story. I am "stuck" in a foreign country for some strange reasons; one of them is to avoid folks squaking at me for this crazy endeavour. YC would be a good excuse to fly back; it passes off as a job interview of sorts.

I am destined to piss off the older people. Shrug.

bls• 19 years ago

Where? I am currently in Thailand.

whacked_new4• 19 years ago

japan. on traveler's visa. very, very random story.

ced• 19 years ago

How is it over there? I'd email you, but you have no email address in your profile.

nostrademons• 19 years ago

Yes, but we're taking a break on the original idea for about a week or so. The yCombinator rejection gave us another product idea; we want to push a minimal version of that out and see how it goes before returning to our original idea.

aglarond• 19 years ago

Will definitely proceed because I believe in my idea. I just need to make enough time to work on it, which means finding funding so I can do it full-time...

It was a very nice rejection letter, though. And, I'm consoled by the fact that they at least looked at the website - at least there was access from a Bay Area IP...

startupstarter• 19 years ago

I'm starting a startup hub in the SF bay area: http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=11808

Readmore• 19 years ago

I would hope that you would continue working! yCombinator isn't the end all be all, it's not really even what matters. Just make something that you feel has value and hopefully other people will too. I think Paul is a very intelligent guy and I love reading his views on stuff but if you stop working on a startup just because you didn't get his blessing into yComb then you're giving him WAY too much credit.

cwilbur• 19 years ago

I knew I was a long shot. I had two strikes against me in that I'm a single founder and I'm more interested in building a company I want to work for than in becoming rich at it -- so my interests and investors' interests don't line up.

Of course I'm still proceeding -- Y Combinator money was a means to an end, and not an end in itself.

dmgreer• 19 years ago

Of course, my thing is already started, the YC thing was just a last minute deal, I only found out about it a couple of weeks before the deadline. People are interested in what I'm doing, interest is building, and I have a lot of ideas to continue improving it.

I'll still be looking for some cash, though, because development would go a lot faster if I didn't have to work to pay the bills, and it would help me compete against anybody who might be out there to compete against me.

Vote up if you're rejected but will still proceed

Related Stories