Ask HN: Who got rejected in earlier cycles of YC application and made it anyway?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1191566

by jacquesm • 16 years ago

80 66 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Daniel just wrote he got rejected and someone else chimed in they had been too, but were definitely not going to let it make a difference.

So, my question is what is the biggest success that YC missed out on, some group that pitched during one of the cycles and that was rejected, manned up and made it without the YC funding and the access to the network?

SwellJoe4• 16 years ago

CouchDB is a pretty well-known "didn't get accepted, but kept going anyway" project. Not really a business success story, but it is a project that has had an impact on web technology, and on a scale that many YC companies have not. It's an Apache Foundation project now, but I don't know what that means for its business case.

And, of course, several teams have been rejected once or twice and then gotten in later. A few have even blogged about it; notably wheels of Directed Edge.

marketer• 16 years ago

Actually, the authors of couchdb did eventually start a company around it: http://is.gd/aEdvW . I think it's still in stealth mode, though.

tcc619• 16 years ago

it's up and running at http://www.couch.io/

funny how TC called it "stealth mode". i don't recall the couchdb guys ever being very secretive about it. they are too relaxed for that :)

Alex3917• 16 years ago

"My question is what is the biggest success that YC missed out on"

There is a company that makes iPhone software that was rejected by YC, and they recently turned down a buyout offer of 10M. I can't really give more details than that since obviously it's not public.

jeromec• 16 years ago

AfterTheDeadline was rejected, and got acquired last year by Automattic (WordPress). http://blog.afterthedeadline.com/2009/09/08/after-the-deadli...

Edit: I should note that Paul Graham mentioned in his interview on Mixergy that picking companies is one area where they are weak. That may be true, but I'd wager the YC batting average would be higher than typical Angels/VCs.

freshfunk9• 16 years ago

Hmm don't know. With all due respect to PG and crew, VCs and angels seem to do their homework as well. Actually their initial filters are probably much more restrictive so I guess it would depend on how you calculate the batting avgs.

Harj• 16 years ago

VCs do months of due diligence before they'll write you a check. We review an application from and write a check after speaking with you for 10 minutes.

andyjdavis2• 16 years ago

It depends whether you are more concerned with how often they pass on someone who then goes on to be successful or how often they pick someone who then fails.

I suspect for most investors passing on someone who goes on to be wildly successful hurts a lot more than investing in multiple failed ventures. Given that, having a longer more thorough process may not be beneficial. At best a long process can reduce the number of failures by refusing to invest in them but it will never increase the number of successes which is limited by the number of people who ask you funding.

I'm kind of surprised that no well funded VC funds have come up with the idea of just handing out 5-10k to every single not obviously doomed startup they come across in exchange for a few percent of each company. They could call it shotgun investing.

leif• 16 years ago

I believe Directed Edge got rejected, kept going anyway, and got accepted a year later. They had already done a bunch of work and had customers in the pipeline, which let them make great use of the network once they were there.

smanek2• 16 years ago

My company was rejected from YC W09, but raised $1.5M in VC 2 months later.

We just buckled down, and launched anyways (ahead of schedule!). Once you get users and have some promising data, raising money is definitely doable.

jacquesm5• 16 years ago

Congratulations, to raise a million and a half from a VC within two months of a YC rejection is probably a record.

That should really help to put a YC rejection in to perspective for those who receive 'bad news' in the mail in the next couple of days.

wheels• 16 years ago

I know of one other team that did the same.

pg6• 16 years ago

We totally blew it that time. IIRC you did fix the thing we were most worried about when we were talking to you.

smanek2• 16 years ago

Well, I think it's still a little too early to tell if you blew it ;-) Raising capital != successful company, so we'll have to wait a few more years to see if I can make something of the opportunity.

There were some significant problems with the company/idea when we applied. Hopefully, we're fixing things quickly enough to win in the end (I think we are!) :-D And thanks to PG's advice, I have a new-found appreciation for some aspects of the business that I'd overlooked before.

p64• 16 years ago

I think the best advice Ive ever gotten was "dont be such a pg fanboy"

freshfunk9• 16 years ago

I definitely intend on continuing development on my projects. If you're a YC reject and want to join the community of rejects in moving forward, I'm putting together a group (in SF).

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1191553

andyjdavis2• 16 years ago

It would be good/fun to see a little competition develop between YC funded companies and the YC rejects. The empire Vs the rebellion if you will. I'll leave it up to you to decide which is which.

DaniFong• 16 years ago

We were rejected, with some recommendations on what to work on next; we changed our application for our technology when we heard that twice, then after nine months we raised money from a top green VC at a multimillion dollar valuation. We just made it through series B, and we're going to power the developing world before coal can get its pants on.

jacquesm5• 16 years ago

That sounds like a very interesting project, I've read a bit on your pages and I figure Vuilleumier heat pumps or the Stirling cycle figure in there somewhere.

I wish you much good luck with this, one reason why I'm really happy someone is looking in to this is because coal causes more radioactivity released in to the atmosphere than nuclear plants even would.

blader4• 16 years ago

I was rejected the first time, got in the second time, but dropped out a week later to run a different company. We were profitable at 32 employees and got acquired by Zynga last month.

mrtron2• 16 years ago

That is serious business.

freshfunk9• 16 years ago

More like treacherous business. (Sorry, I could not resist.)

pg6• 16 years ago

It is probably not an accident that this is phrased in such an odd way, with the subjects of the sentences missing. It should read "we got in the second time, but I dropped out a week later." What happened is that Siqi and a cofounder started YC, then a week in Siqi bailed and left his cofounder in the lurch because a side project of his had unexpectedly taken off. We suggested making the side project be the focus of the startup they were doing, but Siqi didn't want to share it with his cofounder. His poor cofounder kept going and managed to recruit someone new, but the startup limped along without Siqi and didn't live much past demo day. It was probably the most treacherous thing one cofounder has done to another in YC so far.

I would never have said anything publicly about the matter, but I can't stand to hear it described in this misleading way.

jacquesm5• 16 years ago

That's pretty low.

Has YC changed its contractual agreements with new YC companies to avoid such treachery in the future ?

freshfunk9• 16 years ago

That sucks.

Oddly enough I actually know (well, actually met) Siqi back in the day when he was at Powerset. It's interesting to hear this kind of story.

Go figure. :\

ryanwaggoner• 16 years ago

Umm, hold on a second. So I have a cofounder and a startup, but I also do little side projects here and there on my own, mostly for fun / learning. Am I to understand that if one of them blows up and I elect to leave and pursue that instead of my current startup, I've committed "treachery" against my cofounder? If my cofounder had something like that happen to him, I'd be incredibly happy for him (and a little jealous), but I wouldn't consider it treachery unless he tried to take his equity or it was competing with our startup or something.

I know that it's popular to compare picking a cofounder to picking a spouse, but they're not the same thing, and if you start a company with someone who later decides to move on, that's just how it goes. Am I way off?

whyme2• 16 years ago

> I would never have said anything publicly about the matter.

And you shouldn't have, it's unprofessional from someone holding your position.

> I can't stand to hear it described in this misleading way

How is it misleading? He didn't say we in reference to his YC history. He omitted any concept of more than one person, thus the assumption should be that he was speaking about himself. Which is fine.

blader4• 16 years ago

Wow, this really stings coming from someone I respect so much. This is what happens when you leave without an explanation from YC I suppose.

Paul, I agree I should have said "we got in the second time, but I dropped out a week later". I apologize for not being clear but I don't accept that there was anything wrong with what I said.

To be clear, the side project of mine which took off was co-owned 50% by my another founder who was not involved in YC and didn't want to join, so it wasn't mine to simply share with my YC team.

There were 3 cofounders who went to the YC interview - there were 2 cofounders remaining after I left. I was transparent with both of my cofounders and we remain friends to this day - they had zero involvement in the side project from beginning to end. I specifically asked each of them if they felt I was behaving unethically - they responded that they don't believe so and would have done the same in my shoes.

p64• 16 years ago

All the dude gave was a brief description of his experience in response to what the original poster asked for. Calm down pg, you are not a god.

vii• 16 years ago

Siqi hadn't agreed to share his entire life with his YC cofounders and pretending otherwise is very childish. The fact that PG is being upvoted for this simply because he is PG is damaging to reasonable debate.

tophercyll2• 16 years ago

I don't have a "YC missed out on investing in our insanely profitable company" story, but I did get rejected before finding myself at a YC company anyways.

Evan Miller (emiller) and I applied for Summer 06. Evan had to do most of the work on our application because I had deadlines with my publisher on my Ruby book. I was proud that I was writing a book, so I mentioned it in my bio.

In retrospect, I wonder if that doomed us. Sorry, Evan. If I was reading applications, I'd have been like, "This guy thinks he's writing a book and starting a company? Fuggedaboutit."

But another one of my friends got into Winter 07 and he's very persuasive. A year after their session ended he convinced me to leave the corporate world and join him and his cofounder.

Wish I could finish the story by saying we're insanely profitable already, but hey, we're still alive, we've got a great product, and that's awesome.

There are a ton of ways to get a business off the ground, so one rejection from one incubator is really just the beginning. To everyone in that situation, don't give up. And if this one doesn't pan out, maybe you'll go even further with the next one!

jacquesm5• 16 years ago

That's a hell of a story. I can't imagine that the book thing is what blew the application though, after all that could have been discussed in the interview if it would come to that.

Good to see you're still going!

tophercyll2• 16 years ago

Haha, well, we were also in a pool with a ton of other brilliant, driven applicants! That might have had something to do with it too. =)

pg6• 16 years ago

We've definitely missed good startups. But one advantage of having so many competitors is that we're much more likely now to learn when we screw up. When a startup from one of the other YC-like organizations does well, I often check their YC application to see how we missed them. Usually it's because they were good guys but working on a terrible idea, which they later changed. So in response to that we now make a conscious effort to pay less attention to the idea and more to the people when we read applications.

csomar• 16 years ago

But people change as the idea do, no?

p64• 16 years ago

So in other words the rejects can now infer its because they suck, and not just their idea.

froo2• 16 years ago

Ok, what about if the opposite was true?

How do you handle situations where the idea is (in your opinion) great but the person is perhaps lacking for whatever reason?

Is this a situation where you pass or do you take a proverbial punt? Have you done so in the past (don't need to name names to save someone's ego)

pg6• 16 years ago

We wouldn't fund a group if the founders were really lacking, e.g. if they seemed uncommitted, or not smart enough to build whatever they were planning to.

jasonwilk• 16 years ago

The guys from MyFit are doing well, (by well I mean raised a series A) and they were rejected from YC. But, In my opinion, if you get rejected by YC, it doesn't mean your idea is awful. From my experience, it seems PG likes ideas that with a ton of hard work in 3 months can go from concept to market. Some ideas, such as MyFit, were going to to take too long to get a proof of concept ready and thus it's not exemplary of the program.

If you are thinking about applying, or re-applying, keep your idea simple and concise. Let PG and all the amazing YC contacts help you figure out what the killer feature is of your app that will turn it into the multi-million dollar idea.

charlesju• 16 years ago

My company is a YC-reject, we're doing ok. With that being said, I still love YC and it makes sense for a lot of companies and I agree with pg that it just wasn't right for mine.

Here are a couple things I have learned about funding in my last 2 years building my startup:

1. Funding is mostly a security blanket. An expensive and usually unnecessary one. I think most startups do worse with funding because they lose that fight or flight mechanism that drives entrepreneurs to do mind-blowing things. I don't think most ideas require funding exceeding the seed stage, which is usually a lot cheaper if you can find it elsewhere. For example, I launched my company to profitability with just 3 laptops + servers, which you can usually dump onto credit cards if you're growing way faster than your cash-flow (which makes your startup cost almost $0 to start).

2. You cannot base your startup's success on whether or not one person (pg) believes you can make it. If nothing else, pg cannot possibly be an expert in every field.

3. Money is EVERYWHERE in the valley. It is absurd how many different VCs there are, and how much money they're obligated to deploy in behalf of their LPs. There are definitely less opportunities than the money out there to fund them. Getting funding is pretty easy. It's all about building models that you can plug a # into and get a bigger # out, which if anyone needs help with please feel free to email me.

4. Lastly, if you believe you can make it, no one can stop you. Go be a tiger.

Ask HN: Who got rejected in earlier cycles of YC application and made it anyway?

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