The Worst Part of YC

We are going to send out YC summer 2014 interview decisions (both yes and no) before 10 pm PDT tonight.

The worst part of our job at YC is rejecting companies.  It leaves me feeling down for many days after our application process.  I experienced plenty of rejection from investors while running my own startup, and I remember well how bad it is.  Starting a startup is such a hard thing that we wish we could help everyone doing so.

Some day, we hope to be able to fund almost all the good startups.  In the meantime, we still have capacity constraints as we figure out how to scale, and that means we’re stuck saying no to potentially good companies.

The best startups often look bad at this stage, and we make mistakes.  We could easily miss something great.  If you’re working on something that users love, you like working on it, and you have a plan for how to build a business around it, then please don’t let us deter you.  (It's sometimes useful to ask friends for an outside perspective on how you're doing.)

Although we had nearly 20% more applications than a year ago, it was really striking how much higher the average quality of applications was for this batch compared to any previous batch.  Most of the partners independently mentioned this to me.

Anyway, to everyone we’re unable to fund: Best of luck, and don’t give up.  We love to see founders and companies reapply—companies that look bad now can look great with 6 months of progress.