Re:The YC Interview and a Visit to 10 Downing Street
by mrkurt on Thursday May 01, 2014 @03:22PM
(#7682123)
I got rejected back in 2010 as a solo founder (my cofounder bailed a few days before the interview), and feedback was all about the idea -- not my sudden solo founder status. The idea is really all they have to critique based on the app and interview. They consider founders heavily, but how do you give good feedback on "you guys just didn't blow us away as a founding team"?
Here was my rejection for something close to what Beacon does now (this was pre-startfund money):
> I'm sorry to say we decided not to fund you. There may well be something in the idea of commissioned stories, but it seemed to us that to get such a project rolling it would either have to be a spinoff of an existing site with lots of traffic or be quite highly capitalized (since otherwise there wouldn't be enough "donors" to cover costs). A YC size investment wouldn't be enough, and yet it would be hard to raise enough from post-YC investors, because they'd demand "traction."
Here was my rejection for something close to what Beacon does now (this was pre-startfund money):
> I'm sorry to say we decided not to fund you. There may well be something in the idea of commissioned stories, but it seemed to us that to get such a project rolling it would either have to be a spinoff of an existing site with lots of traffic or be quite highly capitalized (since otherwise there wouldn't be enough "donors" to cover costs). A YC size investment wouldn't be enough, and yet it would be hard to raise enough from post-YC investors, because they'd demand "traction."