>Original YC would not reject founders over their current product strategy and because they haven't figured out the right way to structure their business--haven't put together the "proof" that they could be on track to be a unicorn, etc. That's a VC rejection. Of course, YC gets many thousands of applications and has to reject most of them. You could say they shouldn't be criticized for trying to give a little feedback.

My controversial opinion is that they should stop giving feedback. "Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt."

My startup got rejected because "valuation is unlikely to cross 100 million". Everyone is entitled to their opinion but we are already at 10m valuation and AI in ecommerce doesn't really have 100m cap.

Most of the founders on reddit and discord take the YC feedback as gospel and give up/pivot when its absolutely the last thing they should be doing. Unfortunately we will always have this power imbalance between VC and startups