To all those founders who haven’t received an interview call from YC today & are feeling rejected, don’t feel down & dejected. Thousands of founders have been in the same place as you, before they figured it out & made their venture into a big success. Some of the more successful founders in our portfolio have been there as well.
It reminds me of my own experience ~7 years ago, when we pitched the idea of Globevestor to YC. We sat in Paul’s living room, being interviewed by the trio of Paul, Jessica & Sam. You couldn’t get more YC than that! Our pitch was that the time for India was here & we were on a cusp of a big shift in early-stage ecosystem in India. But none of them even knew about Flipkart or Inmobi, the two unicorns we had then.
An hour later, just off Caltrain, we got the dreaded no email from PG —
“I’m sorry to say we decided not to fund you guys. It was a hard call, because you’re clearly smart. But when found when discussing the idea that we knew so little about the Indian startup market that we had no idea how to judge this company. Maybe now is the time for something like this. Maybe 10 years from now is, in which case result = disaster.”
Is now the time for your idea? Go get it then. You’re not alone. And this failure is not it.