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Sorry to hear you did not get in. Must be very disappointing. I'd have a deeper look at the feedback though, and assume good faith in the rejection. From the re

Sorry to hear you did not get in. Must be very disappointing. I'd have a deeper look at the feedback though, and assume good faith in the rejection. From the rejection: Unfortunately, we were unable to get to believing that you had a strategy for supplanting Yelp as the top Google search results — having worked on SEO extensively in the past a better product often times isn’t enough. I read this not bluntly as: You should be able to beat Yelp, else you will fail, I hone in on: 'unable to get to believing that you had a strategy'. From an outsider perspective this is unfortunately what happened: You did not have a solid enough online marketing/acquisition strategy (social, search, advertising, partners, email etc.), or failed to convey it during the interview. I don't think yCombinator failed to see the market potential, in my view they are actively looking for potential (from SF-based sleeping bag site to world-wide bed and breakfast replacement). I also do not think you were invited to make them seem more outsider-friendly, only to have you be rejected for being an outsider. It is about the online marketing strategy. In their (and my) experience, just having a better site is not enough. For an online directory company, SEO should be in the companies DNA. Preferably a founder has knowledge on SEO and can weave marketing opportunities into the decision making process. If you think back to the interview part about online marketing, do you remember there being confusion? Or not having a concrete answer at-the-ready? Did your pitch include a slide on marketing strategy? Also, the questions they asked like: How are you different from competitor X? Were these questions unprovoked? If so, enhance your pitch by listing your competitors, and their differences, pro's and con's compared to your company. This preemptively clears away such doubts. Take a look at Mint's pitch deck: http://www.slideshare.net/hnshah/mintcom-prelaunch-pitch-deck http://www.slideshare.net/hnshah/mintcom-prelaunch-pitch-dec... They make you believe they've done their market research and have a solid customer acquisition strategy from the get-go. Perhaps you can use it to improve your pitch. I'll have a deeper look at your website and perhaps will send you over some on-page SEO issues to fix or ignore. But strategy/conversion/campaigns will contribute a lot more. Also, your site already looks great, you've told us you have decent numbers, a nice community, a great team, so probably: you will get there, wherever 'there' is.

ritchiea 12y ago
It seemed to me their rejection grew out of Aaron Harris's experience with Tutorspree: http://www.aaronkharris.com/when-seo-fails-single-channel-dependency-and-the-end-of-tutorspree http://www.aaronkharris.com/when-seo-fails-single-channel-de...
- Theodores 12y ago
  Thanks for the link. TL;DR: In a nutshell their business came from SEO and that was it, no other channels. Google changed the game and they no longer got business through organic search results. They tried to get other leads, however, the quality from things like PPC wasn't the same - no conversion. Aside from these problems they were also in a business that did not scale very well - too many locations needing too many resources. They could not afford to grow, threw in the towel and handed money back to investors.
larrys 12y ago
"I don't think yCombinator failed to see the market potential, in my view they are actively looking for potential " Much of life as we know does have a luck factor involved. Who is to say if they had spent the money (could afford to) to fly all three people out and not been near the last interview whether the outcome would be different? Maybe. Maybe not. Thing is you never know about the minor details that lead to, or prevent success. When I was younger I once spent my own money to fly out to a trade show, stay at a hotel, walk the floor and as a result landed a job that I wasn't really qualified for that I would have never gotten by resume alone (that I am pretty sure of). [1] Perhaps the person was in a particularly good mood that day perhaps I just said and did the right things. I could spin this story a dozen ways (depending on the point I was trying to make). My general rule though has always been to "spend money to ensure success". The downside of spending money is very clear (it's finite, the amount of money that you spend and of course the time in this case. Ok sure there is opportunity cost as well.). The upside is unlimited. As a generality people tend to focus on the upside and not the downside in decisions. [1] There was also quite a bit of leg work upfront prior to doing this as well.
mkempe 12y ago
Wouldn't the point of YC's investment and share have been to help and teach them how to work out SEO (in addition to other things) so that they could beat Yelp? (if truly Yelp is a competitor) Isn't the point of YC to pick and help startups that will elucidate a path to rapid, lasting growth? That reason for rejection doesn't make sense, unless one is to believe that nobody can ever build a successful specialized directory because Yelp is already and will always be king of the world. Did YC invite them because they were somehow going to be the New Yelp?

ritchiea 12y ago

It seemed to me their rejection grew out of Aaron Harris's experience with Tutorspree: http://www.aaronkharris.com/when-seo-fails-single-channel-dependency-and-the-end-of-tutorspree http://www.aaronkharris.com/when-seo-fails-single-channel-de...

Theodores 12y ago
Thanks for the link. TL;DR: In a nutshell their business came from SEO and that was it, no other channels. Google changed the game and they no longer got business through organic search results. They tried to get other leads, however, the quality from things like PPC wasn't the same - no conversion. Aside from these problems they were also in a business that did not scale very well - too many locations needing too many resources. They could not afford to grow, threw in the towel and handed money back to investors.

larrys 12y ago

"I don't think yCombinator failed to see the market potential, in my view they are actively looking for potential " Much of life as we know does have a luck factor involved. Who is to say if they had spent the money (could afford to) to fly all three people out and not been near the last interview whether the outcome would be different? Maybe. Maybe not. Thing is you never know about the minor details that lead to, or prevent success. When I was younger I once spent my own money to fly out to a trade show, stay at a hotel, walk the floor and as a result landed a job that I wasn't really qualified for that I would have never gotten by resume alone (that I am pretty sure of). [1] Perhaps the person was in a particularly good mood that day perhaps I just said and did the right things. I could spin this story a dozen ways (depending on the point I was trying to make). My general rule though has always been to "spend money to ensure success". The downside of spending money is very clear (it's finite, the amount of money that you spend and of course the time in this case. Ok sure there is opportunity cost as well.). The upside is unlimited. As a generality people tend to focus on the upside and not the downside in decisions. [1] There was also quite a bit of leg work upfront prior to doing this as well.

mkempe 12y ago

Wouldn't the point of YC's investment and share have been to help and teach them how to work out SEO (in addition to other things) so that they could beat Yelp? (if truly Yelp is a competitor) Isn't the point of YC to pick and help startups that will elucidate a path to rapid, lasting growth? That reason for rejection doesn't make sense, unless one is to believe that nobody can ever build a successful specialized directory because Yelp is already and will always be king of the world. Did YC invite them because they were somehow going to be the New Yelp?