What It Felt Like To Get Rejected By Y Combinator

Y Combinator is one of the top startup accelerators in the world and has invested in hugely successful companies including Dropbox, Airbnb, Coinbase, Stripe, Reddit, Zenefits, Instacart and Weebly.  Its reputation is such that every well-informed startup wants in for its programs; Y Combinator’s fellowship program received 6,500 applicants this summer. It can be particularly stinging for passionate startup founders to be rejected, and there have been many stories circulated about what it’s like to be rejected, how to get over the rejection, and why you were likely rejected.

My story is, on paper, no different from most of the others. In my spare time, a friend and I are working on a video application, and we decided to give it a go last summer. We correctly anticipated that our chances were low between our extremely early stage and Sam Altman’s reports of how many thousands of applicants there were.

We actually didn’t even mind; thanks to conversation taking place about the applications on Twitter, it was actually fun. We met interesting founders, learned about cool projects and learned a lot from a variety of people including Y Combinator partners themselves, who were happy to share information and advice. I still follow a lot of the people I initially met on Twitter and I credit that with being the most valuable part of the experience

As it turns out we didn’t even get called to the in-person interviews. As for how it felt:

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

That’s basically it. I shrugged, forwarded the E-mail to my friend and went back to work. My friend similarly messaged me on Skype by saying “Meh.” Sorry if you were expecting something more detailed!

I wrote in my last blog post that even though rejection stings, any investor or incubator, even one as excellent as Y Combinator, isn’t going to make or break your success. A lot of reactions on rejection from Y Combinator emphasize how much it hurt or stung. I can understand the feeling of pouring blood, sweat and tears into a startup only to be told that you don’t meet the cut for a particular accelerator. The problem is that rejection isn’t necessarily reflective of your startup’s quality or potential, least of all from one like Y Combinator. Even the E-mail I received from Y Combinator noted:

Please don’t take it personally. The applications we receive get better every funding cycle, and since there’s a limit on the number of startups we can interview in person, we had to turn away a lot of genuinely promising groups.

Rejection sucks, but if the feeling behind that rejection comes from not being wanted, there’s really no reason to be upset at a rejection from something like Y Combinator.  Buffer and Dropbox were both rejected by Y Combinator. They even went out of their way to write a blog post outlining why they don’t give individualized feedback on rejections. By all accounts there’s no real reason to be upset by the rejection. As hard as people work, sometimes there are variables out of your control.

So shrug, tweet to Paul Graham or Sam Altman thanking them for the consideration, and move on.