yCombinator

The yCombinator responses came on Tuesday, and...we didn't get in. I have a bunch of suspicions why, but ultimately it boils down to them only being able to interview 30 groups and us not being one of them.

I was feeling pretty bummed for about an hour, then I read some of the comments on news.YC by other rejects. And I had another idea for a startup. The biggest part of yCombinator's value proposition, for us, is the ability to work in a high-energy hacker environment, where we're continually getting feedback from our peers. And that part is not limited to yCombinator: we could easily organize groups of startups together and have some friendly competition going. We just need to group startups together.

So, I'm taking a little diversion from Diffle (hopefully not more than a week or so) to work on RejectedByYC.com. It'll have forums (which I've already setup), "demo groups" of about 10-12 startups, feature announcements, quick feedback, and karma. The hope is that this'll provide motivation to many teams who were not able to get into yCombinator or other funding, letting us maintain a high level of energy even though we've been rejected. Plus, by grouping them together, we may give them a brand advantage that lone startups don't have.