4 ms·

Ask HN: Why no individual feedback for rejected YC applications

17 points by gajju3588 9y ago

It takes a lot of time and energy to apply for YC, rejection without feedback hurts. Feedback could be in one line, as simple as : Not good enough team. Feedback would help with lot of decisions. P.S. I will keep working on my start-up until I run out of fuel.

hguhghuff 9y ago
Because people argue when they get feedback.
- zerr 9y ago
  So give them a feedback from noreply@... :)
- HeyLaughingBoy 9y ago
  As an aside, learning to not do this was one of the most important changes in my adult life. Learning to accept criticism and use it to improve myself is immensely powerful.
dirktheman 9y ago
They get thousands of applications, it would take way too much time to answer them all. Plus, it's not like 'fix this and you'll get accepted next year'. In fact, they do state a single reason in the rejection email, it's just that it's always the same: 'there were others that seemed better'. Keep working, and don't put too much value on a rejection. If anything, filling in the application itself is a nice way to think about your startup!
- raresp 9y ago
  Wrong, they could define a standard reject message and send it. It doesn't take more than a minute to do a copy-paste and press the reply button.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 9y ago
    A friendly tip for the future: don't start a response by saying "wrong." It may not be your intent, but you come across as argumentative and confrontational in a situation that likely doesn't call for that.
  - dirktheman 9y ago
    They do send standard rejection messages. At least, in 2011 they did, not sure about now. I got this canned message: "We're sorry to say we couldn't accept your proposal for funding. Please don't take it personally. The applications we receive get better every funding cycle, and since there's a limit on the number of startups we can interview in person, 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. http://ycombinator.com/whynot.html http://ycombinator.com/whynot.html 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 team"
soneca 9y ago
Their answer (a very fair reason IMO): "Do you give feedback on application results? We don't provide feedback on application results. If we did this, we'd spend all our time providing feedback and doing nothing else due to the volume of applications we have to process. Read this for more info about feedback." From here: https://www.ycombinator.com/faq/#q51 https://www.ycombinator.com/faq/#q51 A more detailed explanation here too: http://www.ycombinator.com/whynot/ http://www.ycombinator.com/whynot/
mosselman 9y ago
I get why they do it and I get why it hurts. Saying 'team not good enough' would imply that the rest is a recipe for acceptance. What if everything was lacking? Would you want to hear that? "The whole idea, market and the complete team are all crap. Improvement on any of these factors is impossible as everything about your idea, team and execution is shit." I can't imagine that being helpful. To be honest, your question and example feedback "Not good enough team" give me the image of someone who has no savvy in the field of startups that YC is involved with. That you'd think that that would be a valuable piece of feedback formulated in such a way does not really strike me as something that a founder of a successful startup would think. From what I have read and heard about YC and their projects is that having a good feeling about applications is the nr 1 requirement in the whole founding process, so maybe it was that.
raresp 9y ago
You should take the lack of feedback as a "please try again later" message. (Like some use in the 404 pages.)
jklein11 9y ago
My mental model of how this process works is that when YC evaluates your startup you are starting at zero. It is up to you to sway them to a one. If you were rejected, that is because you didn't sway them to a one. It is probably a variety of factors, and each of those factors could have been overcome by a number of things. YC would have to work backwards and figure out what it was that didn't get them to a one. Why is it up to themn to do that work for you? Also, if it was just one thing and they could put their finger on how to fix it... you probably wouldn't be rejected.
whamlastxmas 9y ago
You could probably post your application here and get feedback that would be at least in the same ballpark as what YC thought.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
muzani 9y ago
Partly because feedback makes a lot of people feel worse. It's emotionally exhausting to phrase something in a tactful way. Something as simple as "not good enough team" is very, very difficult to phrase properly. Maybe the team just doesn't feel smart enough. Maybe they have that one guy who they instinctively feel is a douche after meeting thousands like him, but can't explain why they feel that way. Maybe the team is smart but immature. Maybe they realize they could actually be wrong about the whole team and don't want to give false feedback.
asnyc 9y ago
You need to read http://www.ycombinator.com/whynot/ http://www.ycombinator.com/whynot/ carefully - Sounds like fair reasoning to me

17 points by gajju3588 9y ago

hguhghuff 9y ago

Because people argue when they get feedback.

zerr 9y ago
So give them a feedback from noreply@... :)
HeyLaughingBoy 9y ago
As an aside, learning to not do this was one of the most important changes in my adult life. Learning to accept criticism and use it to improve myself is immensely powerful.

dirktheman 9y ago

They get thousands of applications, it would take way too much time to answer them all. Plus, it's not like 'fix this and you'll get accepted next year'. In fact, they do state a single reason in the rejection email, it's just that it's always the same: 'there were others that seemed better'. Keep working, and don't put too much value on a rejection. If anything, filling in the application itself is a nice way to think about your startup!

raresp 9y ago
Wrong, they could define a standard reject message and send it. It doesn't take more than a minute to do a copy-paste and press the reply button.
- HeyLaughingBoy 9y ago
  A friendly tip for the future: don't start a response by saying "wrong." It may not be your intent, but you come across as argumentative and confrontational in a situation that likely doesn't call for that.
- dirktheman 9y ago
  They do send standard rejection messages. At least, in 2011 they did, not sure about now. I got this canned message: "We're sorry to say we couldn't accept your proposal for funding. Please don't take it personally. The applications we receive get better every funding cycle, and since there's a limit on the number of startups we can interview in person, 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. http://ycombinator.com/whynot.html http://ycombinator.com/whynot.html 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 team"

soneca 9y ago

Their answer (a very fair reason IMO): "Do you give feedback on application results? We don't provide feedback on application results. If we did this, we'd spend all our time providing feedback and doing nothing else due to the volume of applications we have to process. Read this for more info about feedback." From here: https://www.ycombinator.com/faq/#q51 https://www.ycombinator.com/faq/#q51 A more detailed explanation here too: http://www.ycombinator.com/whynot/ http://www.ycombinator.com/whynot/

mosselman 9y ago

I get why they do it and I get why it hurts. Saying 'team not good enough' would imply that the rest is a recipe for acceptance. What if everything was lacking? Would you want to hear that? "The whole idea, market and the complete team are all crap. Improvement on any of these factors is impossible as everything about your idea, team and execution is shit." I can't imagine that being helpful. To be honest, your question and example feedback "Not good enough team" give me the image of someone who has no savvy in the field of startups that YC is involved with. That you'd think that that would be a valuable piece of feedback formulated in such a way does not really strike me as something that a founder of a successful startup would think. From what I have read and heard about YC and their projects is that having a good feeling about applications is the nr 1 requirement in the whole founding process, so maybe it was that.

raresp 9y ago

You should take the lack of feedback as a "please try again later" message. (Like some use in the 404 pages.)

jklein11 9y ago

My mental model of how this process works is that when YC evaluates your startup you are starting at zero. It is up to you to sway them to a one. If you were rejected, that is because you didn't sway them to a one. It is probably a variety of factors, and each of those factors could have been overcome by a number of things. YC would have to work backwards and figure out what it was that didn't get them to a one. Why is it up to themn to do that work for you? Also, if it was just one thing and they could put their finger on how to fix it... you probably wouldn't be rejected.

whamlastxmas 9y ago

You could probably post your application here and get feedback that would be at least in the same ballpark as what YC thought.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

muzani 9y ago

Partly because feedback makes a lot of people feel worse. It's emotionally exhausting to phrase something in a tactful way. Something as simple as "not good enough team" is very, very difficult to phrase properly. Maybe the team just doesn't feel smart enough. Maybe they have that one guy who they instinctively feel is a douche after meeting thousands like him, but can't explain why they feel that way. Maybe the team is smart but immature. Maybe they realize they could actually be wrong about the whole team and don't want to give false feedback.

asnyc 9y ago

You need to read http://www.ycombinator.com/whynot/ http://www.ycombinator.com/whynot/ carefully - Sounds like fair reasoning to me