What we did to (not) get into Techstars - Part 2

http://blog.aisleten.com/2009/04/07/what-we-did-to-not-get-into-techstars-part-2/

by MicahWedemeyer • 17 years ago

15 15 17 years ago

blog.aisleten.com

Its interesting to see who they choose in the end. 20 companies is a pretty high number to get them all right. Anyway, keep going and maybe when the summer ends you will have better chances of further funding than any of the TS (or YC or ...)companies!

pclark5• 17 years ago

David's feedback doesn't say why you were rejected. I'd have found that a kick in the guts if I'd actually met and had a dialog with our investors.

With our YC application (we were rejected) we got x2 recommendations from previous YC founders, had other investors in this or the next round of funding, had an online demo, had users on said demo, and had a team of hackers/designers + various other things that we thought might add value to our application.

We didn't get in and have no idea why. The difference is our process was all part of our startup making a demo? networking with other founders? getting users?

I walked away from YC pondering why we were rejected, but reassured that we didn't waste our time - because most of the things we were going to do either way.

If I'd spent more than an hour talking to an investor I'd want a reason (and therefore value) as to why they walked away.

MicahWedemeyer4• 17 years ago

I think a lot of us get our rejection letters and sit there scratching our heads. We did everything right and still got turned down.

My goal with these posts was to provide a benchmark and hopefully keep my and others' hopes in check. No matter how good you are, you're still a long-shot with these things. When working on your application in a vacuum, you start to feel so confident, and that makes the blow harder to bear.

pclark5• 17 years ago

Hah, totally.

Deals fall through.

Applications do too, who knew?

pclark5• 17 years ago

what was the reason? or was there simply no reason other than a flood of equally-or-even-better startups?

veemjeem2• 17 years ago

You know, I'm not sure if all those things mattered that greatly. Our application made it past the first round of screening (we got an interview invitation) and our demo broke when they were viewing it (we checked the logs). We committed code the night before without testing it and although a simple fix, it broke something else.

We didn't have recommendations, we were a small team of 2 (no designers -- we did our own design, ugly but not horrible). The entire YC application form was done in basically 5 hours at a local coffee shop. It took us forever to do the video, for some reason it's hard for me to talk to a stationary camera. We don't have users or investors lined up. We didn't even have incorporation documents yet. We probably have a good 4 months of hard work before we can even consider a private alpha launch (and we've already been working for the last 7 months on it).

Neither of us actually even considered applying to YC, we just didn't think our app was ready for anyone to see it yet, but surprisingly they didn't think so, or maybe they saw something about us that they didn't see in others.

pclark5• 17 years ago

kudos for through so far - they must have seen something awesome in you guys. I'm instantly excited to see what you're upto :)

AlexTheFounder2• 17 years ago

I have a feeling that YC tries to fund the companies that change how people perceive and use technology. Others are just the me-too examples.

Is that the case with what you do?

What we did to (not) get into Techstars - Part 2

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