5 ms·

If you apply and get rejected and don't go after your idea anyways then they were right to reject you. I know that sounds harsh but failure and rejection are c

by uuilly 19y ago

If you apply and get rejected and don't go after your idea anyways then they were right to reject you. I know that sounds harsh but failure and rejection are common-place in startups, YC or not. If your idea can't sustain rejection from a program as competitive as YC then it is the wrong idea or you are the wrong person to make it happen. It's like saying, "I didn't get into MIT so I'm not going to engineering school."

rms 19y ago
College students are an exception. There's a lot of social pressure to not drop out of college to start a company and YC provides a socially acceptable excuse for postponing college. This made PG and co increasingly uncomfortable over time which is why they started preferring college graduates. I realize that someone truly dedicated could still work an idea full time while in college. But this is hard, and it's even harder to get a team to hack with you.
- uuilly 19y ago
  Agreed. You bring up an interesting point about social pressures b/c they are the driving force behind this whole thing. I'd like to run w/ this for a sec... It is NOT socially acceptable to not attend college. It IS socially acceptable to not get funding for your startup. So what happens when someone wants to go to college but they don't have the money? They get loans, they work two jobs, they do what they have to do to make it happen b/c they will be socially rejected if they fail. The same is not the case for funding. If you are committed to your idea, treat funding like a college loan: Not optional. Once you get in this mindset you'll figure it out. You may not get a full ride at MIT (YC) but in state tuition + a TA job at U Mich isn't so bad either. As of now nobody has commented on a sucessful YC reject. I think that is b/c YC applicants tend to be straight A students (blind generalization based on instinct.) Straight A students have other options that involve less social risk. I know of a number of successful entrepreneurs who were thrown out of / barely made it through college. Since they didn't have other options, they HAD to make it work. And since they had been failing their whole lives they've realized that failure is just someone else's or some organizations opionion about them. For good or for bad, they tuned those opionions out. People need to realize that the currency of "failure" is just a bit of social rejection. Running your startup into the ground will not give you cancer. And a big fat 'F' on life's report card is just a sign that at least once, you weren't afraid to push the limits...
  - rms 19y ago
    I'm coasting along now with a 2.8 GPA and a willingness to let it slip to a 2.0. I'm an industrial engineering student and you may remember us as the efficiency experts from movies such as Office Space and American Beauty. The salary for an Industrial Engineer in Pittsburgh is almost constant for anyone with a QPA over 2.0. Those with better grades just get to work for a more nationally known firm instead of a local manufacturer. College is so aversive to me because all it does is prepare me to work for someone else, at a guaranteed salary of 55k per year (sixty by the time I graduate?). True failure for me will be taking a job as an Industrial Engineer. I can't think of anything I want to do less. But if I haven't become successful by the time I graduate from college and no one is funding me, I won't have much of a choice. I'm running my current startup like a business. We're not seeking funding and we're growing very slowly. We have no costs so everything we make is profit. We haven't made any profit because we haven't actually sold anything but we'll get there eventually.
    - uuilly 19y ago
      Godspeed. I think you have the right attitude.
    - rms 19y ago
      Note -- there are many things I would rather do less than work as an industrial engineer, like a McJob. It still represents one very specific kind of failure to me.
      - falsestprophet 19y ago
        Actually, a lot of really well payed industrial engineers work at McDonald's.
        rms 19y ago
        Great... I bet they were the guys who decided to outsource the pickup windows.
Goladus 19y ago
It only sounds harsh because of the language used, and then only to people who associate failure and rejection with finality and personal worth. Often, it is easier to simply use different language than it is try to rewrite a person's internal grammar. When I applied to Y Combinator, and was not accepted, I considered it an objective not met. I didn't think of it as failure, I didn't think of it as rejection. I simply made a decision about what I was going to do next. If you think in terms of rejection and failure, it will be difficult to pick yourself up and try again, unless the semantics you attach to those words do not include notions of finality and personal worth.

by uuilly 19y ago

rms 19y ago

College students are an exception. There's a lot of social pressure to not drop out of college to start a company and YC provides a socially acceptable excuse for postponing college. This made PG and co increasingly uncomfortable over time which is why they started preferring college graduates. I realize that someone truly dedicated could still work an idea full time while in college. But this is hard, and it's even harder to get a team to hack with you.

uuilly 19y ago
Agreed. You bring up an interesting point about social pressures b/c they are the driving force behind this whole thing. I'd like to run w/ this for a sec... It is NOT socially acceptable to not attend college. It IS socially acceptable to not get funding for your startup. So what happens when someone wants to go to college but they don't have the money? They get loans, they work two jobs, they do what they have to do to make it happen b/c they will be socially rejected if they fail. The same is not the case for funding. If you are committed to your idea, treat funding like a college loan: Not optional. Once you get in this mindset you'll figure it out. You may not get a full ride at MIT (YC) but in state tuition + a TA job at U Mich isn't so bad either. As of now nobody has commented on a sucessful YC reject. I think that is b/c YC applicants tend to be straight A students (blind generalization based on instinct.) Straight A students have other options that involve less social risk. I know of a number of successful entrepreneurs who were thrown out of / barely made it through college. Since they didn't have other options, they HAD to make it work. And since they had been failing their whole lives they've realized that failure is just someone else's or some organizations opionion about them. For good or for bad, they tuned those opionions out. People need to realize that the currency of "failure" is just a bit of social rejection. Running your startup into the ground will not give you cancer. And a big fat 'F' on life's report card is just a sign that at least once, you weren't afraid to push the limits...
- rms 19y ago
  I'm coasting along now with a 2.8 GPA and a willingness to let it slip to a 2.0. I'm an industrial engineering student and you may remember us as the efficiency experts from movies such as Office Space and American Beauty. The salary for an Industrial Engineer in Pittsburgh is almost constant for anyone with a QPA over 2.0. Those with better grades just get to work for a more nationally known firm instead of a local manufacturer. College is so aversive to me because all it does is prepare me to work for someone else, at a guaranteed salary of 55k per year (sixty by the time I graduate?). True failure for me will be taking a job as an Industrial Engineer. I can't think of anything I want to do less. But if I haven't become successful by the time I graduate from college and no one is funding me, I won't have much of a choice. I'm running my current startup like a business. We're not seeking funding and we're growing very slowly. We have no costs so everything we make is profit. We haven't made any profit because we haven't actually sold anything but we'll get there eventually.
  - uuilly 19y ago
    Godspeed. I think you have the right attitude.
  - rms 19y ago
    Note -- there are many things I would rather do less than work as an industrial engineer, like a McJob. It still represents one very specific kind of failure to me.
    - falsestprophet 19y ago
      Actually, a lot of really well payed industrial engineers work at McDonald's.
      - rms 19y ago
        Great... I bet they were the guys who decided to outsource the pickup windows.

Goladus 19y ago

It only sounds harsh because of the language used, and then only to people who associate failure and rejection with finality and personal worth. Often, it is easier to simply use different language than it is try to rewrite a person's internal grammar. When I applied to Y Combinator, and was not accepted, I considered it an objective not met. I didn't think of it as failure, I didn't think of it as rejection. I simply made a decision about what I was going to do next. If you think in terms of rejection and failure, it will be difficult to pick yourself up and try again, unless the semantics you attach to those words do not include notions of finality and personal worth.