I Got Rejected by Y Combinator… So I’m building my own Incubator.
2 Years ago, I applied for the ’18 Summer Batch at YC, the world’s most perceived incubator. Days after received a cold rejection email — with of course no feedback.
At first, I was frustrated — and maybe because of being a 1st-time founder, at the age of 18, waiting to go to College, I was assured that not only my idea could work, but also I could launch it myself — without having a Founders’ team. And thus, “Homebody” was born:
“Homebody, a platform to decorate your Home, with the guidace of an interior Designer Online and Cheap.”
1. Complete the style quiz
2. Take photos of your house
3. The designers creates 3d concepts and furniture list proposals and your home is done!
Of course, it may seem like a copy of the Havenly or decorators.com model. But I was in love with the idea so nothing stopped me to make it real. Started working day n night, with sleeping less than 4 hours. Created a Wix Website, found 2 young designers eager to join, and even achieved some press buzz from national channels.
Final Countdown: 3…2…1…Launch!
“Wait! Is the phone broken? Cause’ it ain’t Ring”. The launch was just a disaster. No client at all..Not even 1 Customer (from 100 I had calculated) reached the contact form or the pay button on my website.
The only first messages I made to get was something like:
👋“Heyy I’m Justin Bieber and since I got together with Selena and we need someone to renovate our… dog houses!”
Yeaap…very clever. My mom was apparently trolling. She even faked answering the home phone, declining a supposed customer of mine, since I displayed the home phone number on the site for customers to reach me.
Once getting kicked/ smashed/ hurt, gets you wise
From all this, I realized that I wanted so much this idea to be successful, that I Ignored all the signs of why it couldn’t be.
When Starting a Startup, enthusiasm and passion are the drugs to get you too high. Enough, to kickstart the journey. Still, they get you blind, too, to all possible problems. Same blowing a bubble around you and the idea. But as soon as the Enthusiasm declines, the bubble comes to a burst.
Interestingly, I met a lot of 1st-time founders with ideas that were not painkillers. Ideas without problems to solve. No value to add.
And that may be the reason because many others claim that you have to get 10 failures to get 1 success in Startups.
But why is that? And why is this necessary? It’s a lot of pain for the one who does it and waste of human time in a bigger perspective. Why Could not get someone to make something useful and successful from the 1st time?
Silicon Valley’s famous Entreupreuners, and their Books, are suggesting how to get it right. However, most readers don’t. And Y Combinator or 500 Startups target the fraction of ones who do… but because of the process, the majority gets lost and wasted.
The given purpose: Change that process
So both from my journey and the reads I noted these 2 main points:
Problems — Solutions
- ❌Ideas are cheap. Especially Students’ one, as they have hardly any understanding of any market. ✅Solution: work on a researched idea.
- ❌Without teams, goes Nowhere. But many Founders cannot make their teams. ✅Solution: Let the teams make them.
And fixing, I knew I could shift a generation of Founders in how the start a Startup.
And Univation begins
Univation is the way to change the process and implement the above-listed solutions. An incubator program, for Universities, to let Student Founders start 1) on an already developed idea and 2) make them into teams.
So everyone would come alone, choose an idea, and get matched to a team.
Assumptions to be validated
- Mentors — Experts to give their ideas to a team. In 1-hour sketched a google form and Sent it to Startuppers from Personal Network or FB Groups. Willingness to participate: ✅checked.
- Students to Join Startups. At our University Startup event, we set up another google form asking students to opt-in for startup-idea they would like to join. Willingness to participate: ✅ultra-checked — 150+ applications.
- Students to bring and run the University program at their Universities as a local Univation Hub. Set volunteering opportunities in Angelist, HackerNews, and Startup School Forum. Explained the concept and the need. Willingness to participate: ✅checked — 40+ applied.
Pilot Launch
After getting the most important assumption of the Univation concept validated, we started planning for an actual Launch and Trial and Error process, to see how it actually could work and change the things we should to.
Scheduled Launched: In July.
Official Launch is expected to happen in Sept.-Oct. and we are targeting to have shared the Univation way and have opened Univation Hubs to 100+ Universities. And it may seem difficult, but it takes always more Courage, Energy, and Braveness to get from 0 to 1. And that’s what we want to help students with.
To join us, our team, or apply to open a Univation Hub, send us to team@univation.eu or check our site.
To connect with my, send me a message on Linkedin: Minas Marios Kontis
And of course, give us a clap 👏👏👏👏👏 for all the Students running Univation or Starting something right now.
