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Sadly, we did not make it either. Since I don't have a blog, I'll just say a few things here... Basically, we did everything we could on our end: -Had a prett

Sadly, we did not make it either. Since I don't have a blog, I'll just say a few things here... Basically, we did everything we could on our end: -Had a pretty good demo. We spent a few months working on it part-time and we had the entire thing up and running with enough features for it to be roughly usable and we had some nice mock-ups of the future stuff we wanted to put in. I even showed them that TechCrunch featured one of the UI components (that was released as a standalone widget) done by our UI guy. -we prepared very well. We met with a few people from the local startup community (organizers of DemoCamp, a CEO and CTO of a local startup, etc) and had them pick apart our pitch. They did a very good job and brought up a lot of concerns which we worked out. People I emailed beforehand said to expect a lot of questions at the interview and to think on your feet, but because we had already gone through this 3 times with the local people, none of the questions during the interview were new to us and we had decent answers. So why didn't we get accepted? Well, there were simply better teams around that day. The email from pg did give two reasons, but to be honest, they were pretty flaky. The first was the community aspect (ie, it depended on user generated content) and the second our planned revenue stream. We had good answers to these ready since we expected they'd be raised during the interview and plenty of previous YC startups had overcome the same problems. The way I see it, if pg's philosophy is "build something nice people want to use, then worry about the money" and he rejects you because of revenue concerns, then it's basically a nice way of saying "Sorry, I just liked the other teams better" Of course this illustrates a one of the downsides of the whole startup thing. A lot of the things you do in life are pretty deterministic: if you spend 1hr/day learning Spanish, you'll know it well sooner or later, if you spend 1hr/day working out, you'll increase your stamina or muscles or whatever you're working on. If you work 1hr/day on a startup up.. well, its probabilistic, so all you're doing is tilting the odds in your favour, but you're never guaranteed anything - be it progress or success or whatever. So all the work on the app and all of the preparation for the demo/interview was for naught. Anyway... it'd be a shame to throw so much work away, so we'll probably work on it a bit more, then release it as a side project or something. At least have a decent project to put on future resumes or whatever.

fallentimes 19y ago
Marty, hopefully you guys are doing the startup regardless.
dhimes 19y ago
Thanks for posting. But on your probabilistic/deterministic thought, you did get something out of the startup experience. After all, working out one hour per day can make you more fit, but doesn't guarantee you'll make the team on the first tryout.
- davidw 19y ago
  Working out is a bell curve thing, whereas startups and wealth and some other things like that are exponential. The fastest sprinter in the world can probably run...what...2, 3, 4 times as fast as I can? But the wealthiest guy in the world is worth many orders of magnitude more than I am, which is exponential, not a bell curve distribution. Working at a normal company, doing a more or less normal job is more along the bell curve - you can make pretty good money as a top software guy somewhere, but (options aside), you're never going to get that lucky break and make zillions. On the other hand, you might well make more than the startup guy, if he spends a year working on his own thing, 'for free', and then fails. (See: The Black Swan)
  - dhimes 19y ago
    You make a very good point. I really wasn't looking at it from the perspective of money, but rather the adventure and challenge. (It's probably a coping mechanism, because if I looked at my startup as trying to make zillions I would be constantly depressed.)
kashif 19y ago
We got rejected last year too. It would be nice to be with YC but, over the last year, we found ways of funding ourselves and changed our business plan. We continue to look for great advice - which is often forth coming in videos, forums etc and networking opportunities. YC gives - 1. Advice/guidance 2. A little money 3. Networking Opportunities 4. A high pressure environment to get the best out - quick. Except for #3, we have substitutes for all others. And #3 is picking up too. So I say, "Go be your on YC!"

fallentimes 19y ago

Marty, hopefully you guys are doing the startup regardless.

dhimes 19y ago

Thanks for posting. But on your probabilistic/deterministic thought, you did get something out of the startup experience. After all, working out one hour per day can make you more fit, but doesn't guarantee you'll make the team on the first tryout.

davidw 19y ago
Working out is a bell curve thing, whereas startups and wealth and some other things like that are exponential. The fastest sprinter in the world can probably run...what...2, 3, 4 times as fast as I can? But the wealthiest guy in the world is worth many orders of magnitude more than I am, which is exponential, not a bell curve distribution. Working at a normal company, doing a more or less normal job is more along the bell curve - you can make pretty good money as a top software guy somewhere, but (options aside), you're never going to get that lucky break and make zillions. On the other hand, you might well make more than the startup guy, if he spends a year working on his own thing, 'for free', and then fails. (See: The Black Swan)
- dhimes 19y ago
  You make a very good point. I really wasn't looking at it from the perspective of money, but rather the adventure and challenge. (It's probably a coping mechanism, because if I looked at my startup as trying to make zillions I would be constantly depressed.)

kashif 19y ago

We got rejected last year too. It would be nice to be with YC but, over the last year, we found ways of funding ourselves and changed our business plan. We continue to look for great advice - which is often forth coming in videos, forums etc and networking opportunities. YC gives - 1. Advice/guidance 2. A little money 3. Networking Opportunities 4. A high pressure environment to get the best out - quick. Except for #3, we have substitutes for all others. And #3 is picking up too. So I say, "Go be your on YC!"