It depends on how you define the word startup. I was also trying to regurgitate what I saw as the summed wisdom of the writings of PG, namely http://www.paulgr

It depends on how you define the word startup. I was also trying to regurgitate what I saw as the summed wisdom of the writings of PG, namely http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html and the advice to iterate quickly. I suppose in many cases it is possible and desirable to prove your startup completely infeasible during the time between YC Application rounds. It's better to figure out something won't work than to go with something doomed to failure. But it's even better to iterate that initial idea to something that people actually want. I do think that if you are trying to tackle news/journalism that 6 months is not a long time at all to declare failure; there are so many different possibilities for applications and companies.