7 ms·
Ask HN: Which successful startups were rejected by YC?
And if the founders or anyone in the YC jury read this: what was the reason?
- HeinZawHtet 11y agoSimilar questions 1 year ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9413204 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9413204
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- quadrature 11y agoHow do you define successful ?.
- mkagenius 11y agoSuccess is a journey that starts with a "?" (question mark) and end with "." (fullstop)
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y agoCan you give some examples of successful startups, funded by YC or not, that ended with a "." ?
- Animats 11y agoAnn Taylor.
- p4wnc6 11y agoSo in Python, success is a regular expression that matches zero or one occurrences any character except newline? I've been doing it wrong!
- ygra 11y agoI'm fairly sure Python would throw an error if you treated that as a regular expression.
- p4wnc6 11y agoThat's why to succeed you have to try!
- un33k 11y agoSuccess is when one remains true to self & others. If we must use Python, then - Any of these is considered False: None, '', [], (), {} and False itself. So, one is bound to achieve success by being truthful to self and others, always create value and make no empty promises and know when to "raise" an exception. Never giving up but knowing when to abandon a bad venture can also be seen as success. There must be some +ve energy between a startup & an investor. Timing is also everything. Investors can only invest in so many pet food startups. While a pet food startup is making money and is considered a success, that doesn't mean investors have to invest. Investors sometimes walk away from a B-team founders of a startup no matter how successful the startup really is. A-team with B-plan is always prefered over B-team with A-plan. Sometimes, Founders decide not take money from investors, if they believe that the investor may only bring money and without any intellect and/or networking. With that said, the final transaction is not everything.
- kzhahou 11y agoFailure also starts with a "?" and ends with a "." :-)
- AnkhMorporkian 11y agoCan I get into ycombinator? No.
- mrborgen 11y agoNot very strict demands. If it's still growing and does exciting stuff, I'm interested in hearing about it. (Though that probably is an insane amount of companies)
- mhluongo 11y agoBlockCypher[1] has written about this. I think SnapCard did something similar, though the closest I can find is an article about the laundry service they started[2]. [1] - https://blog.blockcypher.com/what-adam-saw-that-sam-didnt-a0c500dda70#.iwao2hq2x https://blog.blockcypher.com/what-adam-saw-that-sam-didnt-a0... [2] - https://pando.com/2013/10/11/superhero-laundry-founders-launch-startup-to-prove-a-point-then-shut-it-down-once-they-succeed/ https://pando.com/2013/10/11/superhero-laundry-founders-laun... EDIT - Citations
- kordless 11y ago> We didn’t get into YC: Sam Altman told us they did not think we could ever inspire Bitcoin developers to build on top of us. Don't ever let anyone tell you what you can and can't do. Which is to say, make your own way in this world.
- mkagenius 11y agoWhat's the use of mentoring then?
- nostrademons 11y agoTo provide another perspective to integrate into your decisions. Listening to people doesn't mean doing what they say.
- mkagenius 11y agoSure, then what's wrong in Sam warning them about something?
- nostrademons 11y agoNothing wrong with him warning them, but then there's also nothing wrong with them disregarding his warning. It sounds like they did pretty well regardless.
- 11y ago
- justplay 11y agoBuffer is very popular. https://open.buffer.com/buffers-y-combinator-application/ https://open.buffer.com/buffers-y-combinator-application/
- tommoor 11y agoFor context Buffer later got into AngelPad and this was instrumental in the early survival of the company
- nacs 11y agoHere's what I see when I go to that Buffer page: http://thumbsnap.com/i/nlgq33uo.png?0305 http://thumbsnap.com/i/nlgq33uo.png?0305 3 signup forms (1 in a modal) for their newsletter (and an additional link to signup for the newsletter at the end of the post).
- ig1 11y agoCompanies which have publicly disclosed that were rejected by YC and have since raised >$20m: * Chartboost * Sendgrid * LightSail I've seen it claimed that Couchbase should be on this list, but I've never seen a primary source which verifies that they were rejected from YC.
- maxerickson 11y agoDamien Katz was rejected: http://damienkatz.net/2006/11/how_not_to_pitc.html http://damienkatz.net/2006/11/how_not_to_pitc.html Whether that counts for Couchbase is another question. (I guess it probably does)
- frankdenbow 11y agoI believe SeatGeek would also be in this category
- capote 11y agoIs it enough just to raise money from VCs to be "successful"? Many companies still fail even with great funding.
- gaur 11y agoIs there some kind of rule that every startup name has to be of the form NounNoun or VerbNoun?
- justinlardinois 11y agoWell, ChartBoost is NounVerb, if that makes you feel better.
- rajacombinator 11y agoPG offered a good proxy for this a while back. He said if you look at the top companies from other accelerators, most of them probably applied to YC also.
- w1ntermute 11y agoI wonder if investors consider it a negative to be a top company in another accelerator then. "Did you apply to and get rejected by YC?" must be a common question many investors now ask of companies that aren't YC alumni.
- k-mcgrady 11y ago>> ""Did you apply to and get rejected by YC?" must be a common question many investors now ask of companies that aren't YC alumni." Is this a guess or do you have anything to back it up? It seems really strange to me. An investor shouldn't be judging you based on the judgement of another investor.
- w1ntermute 11y agoIt's just a guess, which is why I said "must." But it doesn't seem strange to me at all - investors tend to move in herds. They tend to be much more interested in companies that other investors are also interested in. That's why communicating that there's great interest from other investors is key to raising money - it creates FOMO in the investors.
- k-mcgrady 11y agoOh yeah totally agree with the FOMO. I took it more as 'you didn't get into YC - I'm not interested'. In that case letting another investor make your decision for you seems like a pretty easy way to miss out on good companies.
- w1ntermute 11y agoYeah, and most venture investors are pretty bad at their job - the majority of the industry loses money. But that's irrelevant to startups raising money, because a dollar is a dollar is a dollar.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- mw67 11y agoPreviously discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9413204 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9413204
- mcminno782 11y agoBranch Metrics They were prepivot (Kindrid Prints) and YC didn't like their idea
- brudgers 11y agoMy understanding is that a meaningful fraction of YC companies and founders were rejected by YC before acceptance in a later batch.
- helloanand 11y agoCleverTap - integrates app analytics and marketing. We were known as WizRocket back then. We now have 1500+ customers, and raised $9.6 M from Accel and Sequoia.
- w1ntermute 11y agoWhat reason did YC give for your rejection (if you don't mind sharing)? And did you heed their advice or ignore it in order to get to where you are now?
- helloanand 11y agoFirstly, the interview process was very good. They asked us some very sharp questions. YC said, the reason for our rejection was that our product would only work for large enterprises having many repeat users (think Amazon etc.). So we went back, thought about it hard, and then rebuilt the solution to make it work for small businesses, startups and even large enterprises. Today our customers spans all three segments. I even wrote a blog post about our rejection - https://blog.clevertap.com/the-future-looks-bright/ https://blog.clevertap.com/the-future-looks-bright/
- mkagenius 11y ago> 1500+ customers How many of them are paying?
- helloanand 11y agowe don't disclose that publicly, but here a link to our pricing page - https://clevertap.com/pricing/ https://clevertap.com/pricing/
- mkagenius 11y agoIn general what ratio of free/paying customers should be considered good?
- 11y ago
- synaesthesisx 11y agoFriends with a handful of founders that have been rejected by YC - their companies are all doing incredibly well today.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- mschaecher 11y agoMunchery
- shanwang 11y agoI remember AirBnB's founder said they got rejected by 7 VCs when they started.