Be talking to customers and building a list of interested people to launch to. You remove a lot of risk for YC if you walk into the interview room and say, "We have 25,000 email addresses for people who want our product". (aside, if you launch successfully that also reduces risk!).

Learn about the market. How do your competitors find users/customers affordably?

Learn about the competition. What are they doing well? What do people hate about their offering?

Learn about your users! Surveys, lunches, etc. If your product isn't something that you yourselves would use, you should spend a lot of time with potential customers.

Learn how to talk about your product. Test headlines, stumbleupon landing pages, adwords ads-- whatever it takes to learn that people respond more to "Nice juicy steak" more than they respond to "Muscle tissue sample of a castrated bull" (hat tip to Robert Heinlein).

In other words, pre-launch marketing (research, understanding, outreach)!

I remember hearing that The Simpsons TV show used to have a writer's retreat.

The goal was to have a place and time where the show runner and the writers would spend a few days mulling over script ideas by their writers. They'd get away from the grind, away from distractions, away from the studio, so they could consider ideas on their merits and hear their young writers sketch out hazy early-stage story visions.

They say it worked well for them initially. They identified good ideas really early, and because they got involved early, while the ideas were still malleable, they could give guidance on what the valuable parts of the story were, and what to focus on; that helped the writer when he went away to work on the idea to turn it into a real script.

However, they stopped doing the story retreats. Why?

The reason a show runner gave was that eventually, the retreat became a formality.

People were coming in with a nearly-finished product. They were practicing their presentations to the show runners, pitching them. Sometimes they came in with whole scripts ready, or nearly-complete outlines or A stories.

Which is great. But now you don't need a retreat. If you're going to prepare all of that stuff on your own time anyway, okay ... just do that. If the idea looks like it merits a slot at all, and you have episode slots to fill, how do you turn down polished work? Of course, the beneficial effects of experienced and talented writers guiding a writer's promising first take disappeared. There was nothing to guide. Again, no reason to have the retreat.

It sounds like pitches to YC have become more polished, and that makes me wonder. (Of course, the parallels are pretty tenuous, it just got me thinking).

Clearly, PG and Company are going to enjoy that. It's hard to turn down done work. It's a good thing if you can pitch. I just hope, for the sake of the little future Reddits and Social Calendars out there, that pg, jessica and the gang are protected from the glare coming off that polish.

Brian Chesky's talk at Startup School covered a lot of this--Airbnb had launched more than once and made a couple of successful PR stunts before applying to YC, but YC was still a crucial ingredient in carrying them on to success.

Also, everyone who's gone through the YC interview process and written about it says that, if they had any intentions to pitch at all, they were quickly derailed by questions.

Well said. I'd love to hear a YC perspective on this point. Obviously they get tons of applications, some with real traction and some that are just kernels of ideas. I wonder if they pass on companies that they feel simply don't need them?

YC would be nice, but it certainly isn't the end of the world. Keep hacking, keep working, etc.

Too many startups equate being rejected from YC with failure. That's stupid.

Do many startups really do that? I haven't seen much evidence of that, actually.

In the chat room someone posted a few nights ago, there were more than a few people who hinted at that being the case for them and their companies. I'd consider any number > 0 to be "too many".

I guess they see validation from YC as an absolute guarantee that they'll reach their end goal, or even as the end goal itself. Really, it's neither. There's a mountain of evidence showing that startups face cold, dark, and lonely times whether they're big or small, YC-validated or obscure, well-funded or strapped for cash. If you can't survive without YC, you probably can't survive with YC.

I've been rejected 2 or 3 times now, and I'm still going at it.

Any lessons you can share after your 2nd or 3rd time? What would you have done differently?

Don't apply while you're still in school, and don't apply late haha. Sorry, nothing too insightful.

I personally know of two teams who were rejected from YC and ended up not working on the startup because of it.

I know of one other that probably would have fallen apart had they not been accepted.

It is really disingenuous on their part. There is no foolproof way to filter it, though an suggestion would be that those with little or no product would be more likely to throw everything away upon rejection.

I guess it's an assumption, but I remember seeing lots of posts awhile back basically complaining that it was time to "move on" because of YC rejection.

There are a few situations where getting accepted into YC is really the only chance a founding team has. A combination of young kids with financial hardship and being new to the tech market. They have no connections to work, no contracting jobs to support themselves with, and taking a full-time job is a 1-2 two year commitment.

Other seed funding providers are popping up, sure but if you're short on money you might not have time to wait for their next deadline.

They don't equate it to failing, just to not succeeding.

Not worrying about whether or not you get accepted.

Looks like you're the only person who caught the not in the title

Have a plan B, C and D

ie. you should still be out raising money and doing everything else you need to do to grow your company.

I'm continuing my everyday routine of hacking away. Trying to out it out of my mind, honestly. If I get in, I get in. If I don't, then I don't. Won't stop my determination to build my product and company.

A tiny % of applicants are going to get in and they've probably already reached out to the 5 or 10% they're considering.

So we should just be working away on our startups - YC would be great to have but there's plenty of other paths to success.

Any actual information re: whether or not that's true?

It's not true, I haven't gotten an email yet!

Sounds like you guys are doing the right thing ... I am doing the same personally, living and breathing my idea just like I was before YC and just like I will be after YC. Whether or not I am chosen I will continue to do just as I am today. Even if I get an interview I certainly will not change my routine simply for the sake of YC ... I should have a demo by the time the interviews come around and I will be happy to show it to the team if selected to do so.

So many people seem to look at YC as a do or die ordeal. Simply put, it is not ... It is a wonderful program for a number of great minds and startups, they will likely pass on more good applicants than they will accept, that is not to say the YC guys do not know what they are doing, they have presumably well over 1,000 applicants and only accept around 40 companies. If you get rejected and decide not to continue on your project you were probably not the kind of founder they were looking for in the first place.

Use YC as motivation for your project, not as a gauge for your company's success, that is not what is what meant to be.

Zach

Don't sweat things that are out of your control. Unless and/or until you're invited to an interview, the YC process is out of your control. Just focus on your stuff, what you can have an effect on. Otherwise you're just creating stress that you don't need for yourself.

would be interesting to know what pg would say ?