Tell HN: If you haven't got your YC email, check your Spam folder

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=348377

by gruseom • 18 years ago

48 59 18 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

My partner phoned me on receiving a YC response email. I was surprised, not having seen mine yet - but actually it was in my Spam folder in Gmail. Since I might not have seen it for a while otherwise, I thought this information might be helpful to others.

kwamenum86• 18 years ago

gmail marked it as spam

markbao2• 18 years ago

In IRC:

  <frisco> lol, didn't pg invent that spam filter?

(Didn't quite invent it, but http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html)

SwellJoe2• 18 years ago

According to a conversation I had with Paul Buchheit (paul here at HN) in the past, GMail spam filters are heavily reputation based, which leads me to believe that Bayesian filtering is not a first line of defense, and likely would be specific to each mailbox rather than universally applied. So, if it's happening to everyone, then it's a universal rule at GMail that's doing the filtering, and thus I would guess not heavily based on any Bayesian results. But I might be wrong, GMail spam filtering may have changed dramatically since paul worked on the project, or I may have simply misunderstood his explanation.

But pg did invent the most powerful recent spam fighting technique. I'm not sure why one would say the description provided in the essay isn't the same as inventing it? Certainly Bayesian analysis existed long before the essay, but I think it's safe to say that the inventor of the airplane was no less its inventor because the internal combustion engine existed before.

markbao2• 18 years ago

Good point wrt inventing. Wanted to be on the safe side, but that makes complete sense!

maxwell• 18 years ago

Maybe Gmail thinks it's one of these:

http://paulgraham.com/firstwatergatesltd.html

aidanf• 18 years ago

"But pg did invent the most powerful recent spam fighting technique. "

While it may be the case that PGs essay was many peoples first exposure to baysian spam filters, he didn't invent the technique.

The first time I heard of it was in a paper published in 1998 at Microsoft research. This predates 'A plan for spam' by 4 years. http://research.microsoft.com/~horvitz/junkfilter.htm

greg_helfer• 18 years ago

How many applicants received any questions on their proposals from YC before tonight?

amrithk• 18 years ago

We got a question about our application last week. We didn't make the cut.

tectonic• 18 years ago

We did (excitement!) get an interview and we did get a question, so YRMV.

bigthboy3• 18 years ago

Congratulations!

bigthboy3• 18 years ago

GMail > PG?

Fail :P

oh well, onward and upward I suppose, can't let something like this knock you down. Like it was said many many times. Everyone who didn't make it, please, by all means, keep moving forward because this is not a death certificate.

pg2• 18 years ago

Like it was said many many times. Everyone who didn't make it, please, by all means, keep moving forward because this is not a death certificate.

This is an important point. I would hate to think that we might be discouraging any of the startups we didn't invite to interviews. It's not just to make people feel better that we talk in the "no" email about how bad we are at judging startups. It's really true. The single biggest topic of conversation within YC is how we can get better at it.

In fact, as we often find ourselves saying to YC-funded startups when they're looking for their next round, practically all investors suck at judging startups. But we probably do worse than most, because we have to judge so many based on so little information.

erik• 18 years ago

Can you share any examples of startups that you regret saying no to?

jchor2• 18 years ago

Thanks! Same here, mine was in my GMail spam folder.

polvi• 18 years ago

spam for me too! thanks for pointing this out.

cbrinker3• 18 years ago

REJECTED! KILLS SELF

Naw it's coo-. I was kind of hoping I would get rejected since I've had second thoughts about someone owning 5% of my idea since I applied a few months back.

Hope the lucky winners blow apart the interwebz 2.5 with some crazy new productive ideas.

tlrobinson• 18 years ago

If your application read anything like this comment I think I know why you got rejected.

cbrinker3• 18 years ago

If you read anything like your application I think I know why you're rejected by life.

Tichy• 18 years ago

What is so bad about his comment? Writing "interwebz"?

charlesju• 18 years ago

Mine was in spam too

staunch• 18 years ago

What's the rejection email look like? Just a one liner or an explanation about how "it's not you, its me"? :-)

chip• 18 years ago

--- We're sorry to say we couldn't accept your proposal for funding. Please don't take it personally. Despite the stock market crash we got a record number of applications this time, and the average quality was high. And since there's a limit on the number of interviews we can do, we had to turn away a lot of genuinely promising groups.

Another reason you shouldn't take this personally is that we know we make lots of mistakes. It's alarming how often the last group to make it over the threshold for interviews ends up being one that we fund. That means there are surely other good groups that fall just below the threshold and that we miss even interviewing. We're trying to get better at this, but it's practically certain that groups we rejected will go on to create successful startups. If you do, we'd appreciate it if you'd send us an email telling us about it; we want to learn from our mistakes.

Y Combinator Staff

prakash• 18 years ago

That's probably one of the nicest and most humble rejection emails.

rigga_sconi• 18 years ago

1) how many applications did they receive ? 2) and how many did they accept ? 3) weve edited the application a lot of times since July. I understand that they started reading them before application deadline. could they have read an older version of our application ? 4) since Google is God, its good is infinite. Hence I assume GMail marked the mail as spam to protect me from feeling rejected, 'cause shit was already happening today since I woke up.

auston• 18 years ago

What does the rejection email say?

ram10245• 18 years ago

anyone know if they just mail the main applicant or do they send a mail to each of the group members? my email is a tad unreliable and i hadn't heard back about my app.

bporterfield5• 18 years ago

Only the main applicant will be contacted. I'm waiting on mine too! Is anyone else that applied still waiting for a response?

morphle• 18 years ago

Yes, also waiting for a response. My best wishes to those who didn't make the cut, you know you'll succeed anyway!.

bigthboy3• 18 years ago

In my application they sent an e-mail to both founders who were attached with HN accounts.

bporterfield5• 18 years ago

Interesting - thought i saw pg say only the main applicant would be contacted.

lindo_rohan• 18 years ago

I didn't get any response from YC as off yet :(

mct• 18 years ago

Recently, I've been amused that gmail has been marking my Google Alert emails as spam. Screenshot: http://tinyurl.com/5v7c6w

arthurw2• 18 years ago

Guys, remember, Ycombinator is a great resource but you'll see that some of the ventures they've backed are either completely stupid, already invented by google or simply not existing today because even they failed. Ycombinator seems to be seeking a very specific set of ideas and type of team. My personal opinion is that this lack of diversity in type of ideas and teams doesn't contribute much to the growth of their endeavor. Why just programmers? The real value is in the vision and outsourcing is easier than ever today. Overall, keep at it! I guarantee that many of the ventures Ycombinator didn't accept are going to do well. Good luck.

tdavis2• 18 years ago

This is silly. And by silly I mean moronic. You can't outsource an entire start-up, especially without more than $15,000. Hell, we couldn't manage to successfully get a Wordpress template created when we supplied a full PSD and offered $300 for it. Talk about epic goddamn fail.

You realize the whole "Clone Amazon for me, $100-500" thing doesn't actually work, right? And look at the last batch of YC companies, will you? There's a lot of diversity there.

Maybe the only thing you got right here is that some of the start-ups YC doesn't fund will likely go on to succeed. Since YC themselves admit that, it wasn't much of a point though, was it?

arthurw2• 18 years ago

I definitely see your point and by no means am I advocating for your typical "send it to China or India for $100" gig. My point is that if you are not a programmer and trying to enter this arena, it's not the end of the world. The value is in your idea, your ability to network, market yourself and create a solid team with well-rounded skills.

Ycombinator definitely has some diverse ideas many of which are fantastic. Like any start-up catalyst, sure, they have backed some ideas that have already been out there to some degree or are no longer around--but that is totally to be expected. There will always be some overlap and like any regular distribution bell curve will show us, some will fail, some will surpass our expectations and rest will be in the middle. I have a great deal of respect for all that Ycombinator does and the people involved. Good luck guys!

wheels• 18 years ago

Welcome to the world of startups and investing. Enjoy your stay.

For those that just got rejected: Welcome. If you're seriously getting into the startup world that will be your first of dozens of rejections. Learn to take it in stride.

Investors invest in stuff they get, stuff that's presented well, and stuff that they relate to. That's triply true for early phase where they're going more on a hunch than anything even bothering to be hand-wavey with projections.

Just one kind of cute story, both from successful founders cum angels: We've had meetings with two angels now. One of them thought my co-founder was a turd. The other thought he was the swellest guy on the planet and has been telling all his buddies about us. Are either of them idiots? No. In one case things clicked, and in the other they didn't. All of the business plans and prototypes in the world wouldn't have changed that.

All early phase investors make some dumb investments. In fact, most early stage investments are dumb. YC is a bit ahead of the curve there, but they don't have a crystal ball.

echair• 18 years ago

lack of diversity in type of ideas

news site: http://reddit.com

geolocation on cellphones: http://loopt.com

form builder: http://wufoo.com

server administration: http://virtualmin.com

electronic components: http://octopart.com

Etc, etc. Lack of diversity? It seems like these ideas span the whole range of Internet startups.

jchor2• 18 years ago

We applied during the last cycle and didn't get accepted. We forged ahead (Were doing this regardless if we are a part of YC or not), started prototyping, networking, and solidified our business vision and plan.

We applied again this cycle and got accepted for an interview. Our YC application has changed a bit since we now have a much more focused direction, but our technology stack has been pretty much the same from day one.

I hope that this can be an encouragement to those of you who didn't get it this time, but I'm sure that if you try again you can only increase your chances. BTW, last time we applied we did it fairly last minute and I missed an email from pg asking us some questions. This time, we applied a month in advance and I checked my YC mail daily so I wouldn't make that mistake again. And yes, he did email us some questions again but this time I replied on time. =).

honeyman6• 18 years ago

It is the 30-th already, and neither from our team got any response yet (anyone else haven't got a response till now too? Or is that we so unlucky?). Checked in the trash folder, under the subfolders, and in the outbox (just to be sure). My ISP will kill me for DDOSing their IMAP.

Of course, we won't stop our project if not invited by Paul-and-the-team. Together with Y, or separately, we'll keep working on it, and, as every self-confident startupper does, we truly believe into it and are sure that it will hit the Web, gain several billions and finally takeover both Google and Apple, so that every investor-who-ignored-us will kick themselves thinking of missed profit...

... but holy, where is that email?

ram10245• 18 years ago

still missing mail as well. you get google and apple and i'll take amazon and ebay. deal?

bporterfield5• 18 years ago

I'm still waiting on a response too...maybe it's some kind of YC startup challenge; none of the undecideds get notified, and the team that handles the pressure the best gets the final spot!

honeyman6• 18 years ago

Or is that a challenge of self-sufficiency in an ICFPC style? "Claiming you are a hacker but crying you haven't received a response? Come to our server and get your response yourself!"

hooande• 18 years ago

I wonder if people are flagging YC rejection emails as spam out of spite.

Tell HN: If you haven't got your YC email, check your Spam folder

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