I almost didn't read this because the submitted title spelled "meh" to me.

But I'm glad I looked. This is hilarious!

(And it has nothing to do with YC or YC applicants. The actual title is much better: "Honoring Those We Missed: The Anti-Portfolio")

It also makes me feel not quite so bad about some of my own personal mistakes...

It's good that the title was changed to the actual article title, but of course my comment makes little sense now.

For the curious, the original submitted title was:

  For All Rejected w2018 YC applicants, a sprig of hope

I hope I can learn to poke fun at myself the way the Bessemer folks do! They are in the same league as George W. Bush.

If you want to learn the fine art of self-deprecating humor, read the Bessemer article and then watch this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4N93jLVPIA

refreshing isn't it, nothing shouts integrity louder than sharing failure.

Really? I see no connection between the two. explain more? Perhaps honesty. Not integrity. More likely good marketing skills. "Nothing shouts "good marketing skills!" more than sharing failure.

They're VC's... so a much higher standard of proof is required to establish integrity. (cough cough Eduardo Saverin)

Gotta remember, all angels and VCs are desperate to increase their "deal flow", that means they need startups to know their name when they go looking for money. So the VC puts on a sort of phoney humility... a kind of "hey we're worth billions but same as you its been hard!" type thing. "Look at how we made mistakes where instead of making tens of billions we only made billions". That way when you are looking for money you might think "Hey those Bessemer guys seemed pretty down to earth, like me!"

It's more like a good PR agency wrote it than 'refreshing'. No one there actually writes... they're al playing golf. It was Sally at the PR agency who wrote the thing that evoked a sense of integrity from you. She needs a pay rise.

Yeah, but the fact that they let Sally publish it means that while they may not have integrity, they at least are not idiots.

integrity being, "the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles."

okay, so, I don't have hard evidence of their strong moral principles, that said, to be in the VC business that long must be a fairly good indicator that their services are trusted, and their behaviour is befitting of their duty.

"With $4 billion under management, Bessemer invests from $100,000 to $75 million in innovative companies like LinkedIn, Yelp, Skype, CornerstoneOnDemand, Pinterest, Box and Twilio. Over 100 Bessemer companies have gone public. Last year alone, Bessemer had 5 IPOs, 7 M&A exits, and 20 new investments. "

Remember folks, the acceptance rate for YC is lower than Harvard. If you didn't skip college because Harvard rejected you, then don't stop doing your startup because YC rejected you. :)

Yes but it's misleading to look at the ~130/~7,000 acceptance rate. The barrier to send out a YC application is much much much lower than sending out a top-tier college application. Michael Seibel said that 30-40% of applicants don't even have a real company, just an idea.

We were rejected four times before getting in. I've talked to others that were rejected six times before getting in. Most people that get into YC have been rejected before. Don't sweat it.

I was rejected 4 times over the years before getting in. We ended up being among the top in our batch after just being around for 2.5 years (this is my 4th company)

I was rejected multiple times as well. This time it was different.

This is hilariously wonderful! At least they have a sense of humor about it. And gives me a lot of hope for my venture and future ones. No one knows a company as well as founders do. Thats why if you still believe in your idea and execution, work on it day and night. Dont be turned off by a few VC rejections. Take their comments in stride and learn from it. Also, remember that most VCs just like most people have personal biases. Maybe you dont fit in the right box yet.

Bessemer has a good sense of humor. They are also involved in Bubbleproof.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/17/watch-the-first-four-episo...

  Failure is not an option. It's a feature

That one really made my day. Thanks for the link.

"As for Compaq, I told him there was no real future in transportable computers since IBM could do it."

- This is the point I made in a comment yesterday. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15537940

hprotagonist was fretting about the "freight train is barreling down on them in the form of Apple and Google"

I said there, and I'll say again here: Waiting for large companies to innovate is like saying "I won't build the Apple II because I'd rather wait for the IBM PC to be invented".

I think that big companies are under too much market pressure to really innovate freely. Startups are a good thing, and Y Combinator is helping. If you have an idea, please don't just give up and wait for the market leaders - make a startup and make it real.

Same goes for "Finally, cornered in a lunch line, Jeremy delivered some sage advice "Kid, haven't you heard of Friendster? Move on. It's over!""

It's easy, and possibly even fun to talk about your antiportfolio and how you didn't succeed, when you are already worth hundreds of millions, as they are at this company.

That's irrelevant. Every missed opportunity stings the same. It's relative.

Piffle.

There's no such thing as an antiportfolio or "missed opportunities". You may as well say "why didn't I pick the correct lotto numbers". The answer is "because you didn't".

Why didn't I make every decision in my life the right decision? Answer: "because you didn't".

I could have made a billion dollars if I had know all the right stocks to pick. The VC antiportfolio is the same thing.

Proximity to an opportunity seems to make people feel a greater sense of that they "lost" the opportunity, but in fact that lost opportunity is precisely the same as the whole world full of other opportunities that the person could have taken at that moment.

> You may as well say "why didn't I pick the correct lotto numbers". The answer is "because you didn't".

Lotto numbers all look the same up front. Startups all look different, so a good VC can be better than a bad VC if they just know which differences to look for.

>Startups all look different, so a good VC can be better than a bad VC if they just know which differences to look for.

I don't think this is an obvious claim. There's no strong evidence that VCs are capable of differentiating good startups from bad.

VCs manage to turn a profit?

My understanding is VCs (as an industry) fail to beat the S&P500 returns, so no, they don't turn a profit.

And thats their job to predict which startup will make the most money or produce most value. In capable of doing shows their weakness, so anti-portfolio is quite relevant IMHO.

I liked this. My main takeaway though is that these people are ridiculously well-connected. It's difficult for me to imagine having that kind of access to so many top-tier companies (even if they weren't recognized as such at the time). And I'm guessing these companies actively sought them out! It really just seems like a different world.

While it's cool they wrote this and fun to read it's also a good piece for them in the sense that they advertise that they were/are involved in all the "hot deals".

Out if interest I googled YC rejected companies that succeeded. Here's a thread from a year back;

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11229700

Note that if YC rejects your pitch, it doesn't mean your company is bad, or the pitch is bad - it just means they don't think you're a good investment for them.

It probably doesn't even mean that. They've said before that the companies they are unsure about and pass on are the hardest to reason about which is probably true for a lot of aspects of business. They just couldn't get across the finish line, there's not much "there" there.

Anyone that got rejected that believes in their business should keep at it. We got rejected several times from YC in the early days, and it really meant nothing for the business in the grand scheme of things (so glad we didn't give up!)

I'm sure I'm not alone in hoping that you (and other successful YC rejections) will post a bit about your company to keep the rest of our spirits up through this dip in our entrepreneurial roller coaster....

Sure :) We're a dev tools/services company. We applied back in 2011 and 2012, got one straight rejection and one interview rejection (not my first either, I got an interview rejection with my first startup ever two years before that!).

We got really close but it wasn't in the cards. Ended up bootstrapping after that, and went to TechStars instead based on a recommendation from a friend (I really felt a need to do one of these programs, insecurity in hindsight). Came back from that and kind of fell into what became Ionic (http://ionicframework.com/) which was a side project for us, found some good traction with it and it consumed us and we ended up doing some VC rounds over the last few years (and continuing to grow nicely, millions of devs, etc.).

There's a long ways to go still but if you believe in the team you have, then you should do whatever you can to make it work. That combination of the right people at the right time is one of the most precious things and something that only you can assess. Not everyone will see the potential, but you realize quickly that they aren't the gate keepers: customers are.

> it just means they don't think you're a good investment for them.

It only means they chose someone else, for any number of reasons. Like all investment funds, they're choosing from a pool of applicants. Pitches are graded on a curve, they're all relative. YC is high profile and gets a lot of applications, I'm certain they're turning down some companies that they think are good investments, sometimes in favor of better investments, and sometimes for other reasons.

I find it amusing your argument is YC doesn’t scale.

I guess... that wasn't my point, but I get the reference. You're right, that is an abstract implication of having finite time and money. OTOH, all venture funds are finite, so none can scale.

It means that they think that you are not one of the very most promising of all the hundreds of companies that apply.

Could still believe you're a great investment.

iirc they're pretty open about having made mistakes in passing on teams as well, and that it would have been a great investment.

"Cowan’s college friend rented her garage to Sergey and Larry"

You mean Susan? The CEO of YouTube? :)

I just got my rejection letter. I suppose I didn't do a good enough job explaining my ideas.

Any other rejects interested in a mastermind group?

We could network with Slack/Hangout, encourage each other, and arrange our own "Rejects demo day" at end of March.

If interested reach out to me.

First time applying for me and first time rejected.

Rejects day is a good idea

I have always wondered, is VC funding only about money or making industry connections too?

Some of the upside include money, help raising your next round (intros to other later stage VCs), providing you with additional money (insider bridge round), hiring leads (VP level), operational input (finances), product input (from partners who've run companies before), giving you legitimacy (companies are worried if you'll be around in 2 years), and yes, sales lead intros (rolodex networker style VCs).

Why haven't I receive my rejection email?

Same here.

Same here.

What this actually means is that VCs have no idea if a company will be successful or not and it's basically luck. The ones that survive are the ones who manage to hit one of their gambles with outsized wins, similar to a roulette table.

Why some continue to believe VCs actually know anything or add value is beyond me. Even YC admits as much, saying their best guess is the caliber of the founder, and that there should be at least 2 co-founders. Everything else is a guess.

> VCs have no idea if a company will be successful or not and it's basically luck

This anti-portfolio is a sample of Bessemer's Type II errors [1]. It does not follow that they are useless. (Their returns are far from useless.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_I_and_type_II_errors

Wrong. If you have enough money, and your gains are sufficiently outsized from a win, then any spread bet across dozens of companies will end up making money. Being a VC in Silicon Valley over the last 20 years is a game you can't lose, as long as you have enough money. And let's not forget, they're not even playing with their own money, they are playing with their investors money.

But it doesn't mean you're a smart VC it just means that you're a rich VC. They have enough high profile misses to show they have no idea what is going to be successful. They passed on Google, Apple and Facebook with a combined market value of almost $1.5 trillion dollars.

> Being a VC in Silicon Valley over the last 20 years is a game you can't lose, as long as you have enough money

You won’t find a source for this because it isn’t true. Lots of VCs have busted because despite diversification, the odds of a single company in a portfolio of 20 to 100 making it big are very small.

Thanks for your anecdotes.

having you heard of friendster, its over move on...This made me laugh so hard.. This goes to show that there is no clear formula/predictor...

The ultimate humblebrag.

Are the invites sent out already? Haven't received any email -- neither invite not rejection. :/

We haven't either. Good luck!

yes waiting for some information.

Anyone hear of companies getting invites yet ?

Subtitled:

Bessemer Venture Partners is perhaps the nation's oldest venture capital firm, tracing our roots back to the Carnegie Steel empire. This long and storied history has afforded our firm an unparalleled number of opportunities to completely screw up.

It is extremely funny.

dang: Can the title be changed? I'm not a startup founder so I don't usually read YC-specific stuff, but this article has nothing to do with YC, its actual title doesn't mention YC, and it is funny and of general interest.

So I think for those of us who received the rejection emails right after 10pm were pretty much in the "for sure" stack and for those who haven't received it yet there's still hope.

Have you heard of anyone getting an invite yet ?

No I have not. I suppose they're too busy celebrating.

Anyone rejected willing to tell us what your idea was?

Yes, mine was not any software related product. It was energy-related technology that extends the range of existing and future Electric Vehicles. The show must go on as planned...

Chatbot that answers science questions.

tool for dynamic/agile feature specs...

A friend in my previous job was accepted after his fourth attempt. Don't give up. And if YC never accepts you, then prove them wrong.

A proud recipient of the rejection email here! Is there a YC Alumni Association of Rejects? Let's make one if not LOL!

Same here, Got a rejection mail.

I'll join the club!

Has anyone received rejections/invites yet ? I have received neither and it's almost 11pm

received it 20 minutes ago

Invite or rejection?

rejection

Jeremy Levine seems to have been the one who missed the most. Even the best have their failures!

What was the wig company?

As a startup founder, I really enjoy reading this one.

Anyone who got rejection mail for w2018 batch?

No ,anyone get an invite ?

How many of us got a video call and rejected?

Has everyone gotten their rejection emails ?

I was rejected years ago and indeed nothing good ever came out of me. There is no hope. ;)

Some guy I used to go fishing with once told me that startups are like fishing. He said, you know, the traditional line & hook type of fishing. Not the trawler, dredging type of fishing. It's a game of luck mostly. No one really knows where the fish are at any given time. But make sure to only ever fish in a pond in which others have been catching fish. Put your line in and wait. And while you wait make sure you don't starve to death.

Also, while you wait, make sure to check up on your mom. Get into shape. Enjoy the scenery.

I have since stopped going fishing with that fucker.

If you go fishing, you should cut the hook off the line before you cast. Otherwise getting the fish may ruin the fishing.

Unfortunately some people think along the same line about running a company, not necessarily a startup one.

Oh, and if you know the fish and tricks of the trade, it is not just a matter of luck. Statistics in sports fishing say there really is a 10x angler. Competition fishing has been a thing for a long time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Freshwater_Angling_Champ...

Do Or Do Not. There is No Hope. ;p

I'm seeing a pattern of a lack of humility that bites him over and over again.