An open letter to the Y Combinator
Subject: Your Y Combinator Application
--
Thanks for applying to Y Combinator. We’re sorry to say that your startup was not selected to interview for the upcoming Y Combinator batch. Please don’t take it personally. We carefully reviewed thousands of applications and since there’s a limit on the number of startups we can interview in person, we had to turn away a lot of promising companies.
Unfortunately we can’t give you individual feedback about your application. This page explains why.
We’re always trying to get better at this. It’s alarming how often the last group to make it over the interview threshold ends up getting accepted to YC. That means there are surely other good groups that fall just below the threshold.
It’s practically certain that groups we rejected will go on to create successful startups. If you do, we’d sincerely appreciate it if you’d send us an email telling us about it; we very much want to learn from our mistakes.
We hope you reapply for the next batch. In fact, we encourage it. Applying multiple times in no way counts against you and a surprisingly large number of companies are funded after applying more than once.
Best of luck,
— YC
Disclaimer:
I have a lot of respect for Y Combinator, and the following is not to be read as a criticism of their selection criteria. I have deliberately applied to YC more than four times, with a particular interest in how they address correspondence and feedback with their applicants. I will explain why I believe that open dialouge and feedback is critical to the continued development and the sustaining of the startup community. I feel that feedback adds tremendous value to the startup ecosystem and the world in general, and I hope to shed some light on what has brought me to this conclusion.
The above email is the fourth or fifth, and only, correspondence that I have had with Y after having submitted several applications. And every single time I see this machine-generated email, I almost cry — not out of disappointment regarding their decision, but out of disappointment in their seeming lack of personability.
Introduction
Y Combinator is unprecedented in the selection of the best entrepreneurs (and their ideas) across the world — we all know that to be true.
I would like to briefly explain the application process for YC, the world’s largest and most successful incubator, to give others an understanding of how much time and effort each entrepreneur puts into their applications, as well as a great deal of emotional investment. Most applicants are first-time or young entrepreneurs, and as the founder of a company whose mission is to help young professionals succeed, I know that they would greatly benefit from YC’s feedback.
It is not the selection criteria that I feel troubled or discouraged by, but the missed opportunity for YC to contribute to the development and success of the startup community as a whole, regardless of their applicant decisions. I know that entrepreneurs, like any student applying to college, or person applying for a job, are not entitled to or owed anything but a decision in return for extensive, consuming effort they put into their applications, but it saddens me to think of what value they could bring and choose not to.
The application:
The application has several major components, the two most prominent of which are the founder’s profiles and a founder video. Each co-founder is required to fill out a profile by answering several profound and difficult questions. If your startup has five co-founders, each of them have to submit their own profiles. I’m sure you can imagine the amount of time and thought that goes into those documents.
Like any video production, the 1-minute founders video is a meticulous process from start to finish. From writing the script, to rehearsing, and the inevitable several takes to get it right, it can be tiring, frustrating, and stressful. Like many other people, I am not particularly comfortable in front of the camera — I would personally rather look into a partner’s eye and have an honest and natural conversation than look at a camera as if I’m recording an advertisement. I respect and understand that this is a necessary part of the process due to the amount of applications YC receives, I do however wonder if there may be an alternative way for YC to get a better, more personable, idea of who their applicants are.
After all of this time and effort, it can be frustrating to not have a point of contact at YC to confirm that your application is even being reviewed. In fact, in one of our four attempts, we deliberately left out some information. We received a message from one of the YC partners a few days after the application deadline. It is the only way we confirmed that someone had actually reviewed our application.
When we told our fellow eager applicants about this experience, I found that I was not alone in my skepticism.
“At least, you have an indication that your application is under review. That’s a blessing in disguise. I’ve spent many hours on it, and I don’t even know where it stands or why it gets rejected.”
This made me realize that there are several entrepreneurs, who are at an early stage, and are feeling the same way. I’ve decided to share this feedback so that YC may consider improving their feedback system.
I am lucky to have great investors for my current company, but unfortunately, not everyone is receiving the great feedback that they potentially could.
My Personal Investor Experiences
I have several personal experiences with renowned VCs like Mark Cuban, Marc Benioff, Ben Horowitz, VC partners like Accel, etc. who I have shown me, my work, and my company a great amount respect. I see and appreciate how considerate they are to every entrepreneur, small or large — I value the personal touch each of them adds to their correspondence and partnerships with their partners.
Most of them get slammed by emails from entrepreneurs every day — ideas, pitches, board meetings, and even reality TV shows, these people are very busy. I didn’t have any common connections to them, but they still respected me for my thoughts and always gave me some type of feedback, face-face meeting, and in some cases, funding opportunities. You have to wonder how they manage this when most of them have more on their plate than YC combinators.
I believe that at least part of the reason they do spend their valuable time offering advice and feedback to young entrepreneurs that approach them is the respect they have for entrepreneurship and the startup community. I am also sure they know that even the smallest bit of correspondence from people as highly qualified as they are instills confidence in the founders and encourages them to continue to pursue their goals, no matter the investor’s personal opinion of the idea or company.
If you are reading this and were rejected by a YC, this is my way of letting you know that there are several venture capitalists who are generous with their time and feedback, so don’t lose hope and keep focusing on your hustle.
What damage does it cause?
Unfortunately we can’t give you individual feedback about your application. This page explains why.
Honestly, it doesn’t cause any damage. But if an incubator like YC, which encourages hacker culture, doesn’t have enough systems in place to drop a line or two of personalized feedback, what kind of message does that send to the entrepreneurial aspirants and rejected applicants?
From the “This explains why” link, you claim that they don’t treat this as a grade, (so happy I saw that the first time) and that there’s simply no reason for rejection.
But seriously. Every partner looks at every application, proven by the example above, and there’s no record of the reason for getting downvoted or not upvoted, to speak in hacker news language? And if that’s the case, how do you keep track of feedback data regarding the following statement:
We hope you reapply for the next batch. In fact, we encourage it. Applying multiple times in no way counts against you and a surprisingly large number of companies are funded after applying more than once.
The Network Effect
YC receives a great amount of applicants every batch. Just imagine how much value facilitating a good feedback system would add. Adding a networking opportunity to the process would be immeasurably helpful to the several entrepreneurs whose lives are consumed by getting their companies off the ground. Just think about it.
Conclusion
Finally, every demo day, you release cool apps like Nova.ai and even futuristic bots that help people in getting as personalized with themselves and with others as possible. A simple hack to your system that facilitates keeping track of the feedback loop would help a lot of people who are putting a lot of effort into applying for YC.
To the readers
I might burn some bridges by making these thoughts public, but I put myself in the front supporting the entrepreneurial spirit and encouraging the enhancement of feedback for all of the hard working men and women that hope to become a part of a growing and passionate start up community. I rarely express my opinions on Twitter or Medium unless I have an emotional investment in the content or story. If you connect to this, please show your support by sharing my thoughts with others.
And if you need any startup help, advice, or even if you’d like to have a casual conversation about running companies and applying for funding during critical times — please feel free to reach out to me directly at ravi at getmeed dot com.
