Disclaimer: I applied S15 and they declined to invite me.
How do you know what you were rejected for? It doesn't matter. Either you were rejected because the assessment was it will not work, or you were rejected for a content free reason: 300 others were stellar, you weren't in the 300.
You don't want to know because you want to run the experiment. Any assessment pre-run is fortune telling, which adds zero content. Run the experiment, because the results, +ve or -ve, are valuable.
You don't need YC's or anyone's "approval" to become an oustanding success, or to believe in your idea.
The unfortunate truth I realized today is this: I believed "YC is the best." If they sometimes fail to select the best, that means they actually can't be.
If you believe in yourself, and your idea, as I do, then when someone says, "you and your idea are not as good as theirs", you choose to have a lower opinion of their judgement. And because you have a lower opinion of their judgement the image of YC becomes less than it was, which is unfortunate.
So getting a rejection is unfortunate, because it's a compelling idea that there's really a place that "gets" all the great ideas, and where all the quality founders can mingle.
The thing I realized is this is a fantasy. As good as YC is, if they decline your proposal and you and your idea work, it's not what you're looking for. That's tough, because it's nice and comfortable to think there's a "destination", beside your business, where you can go and meta-discuss all the things about your business around people who embody the traits you respect, and who are creating the successes you admire.
Maybe my idea and me really don't work, and I'm just blind to the ways in which they don't because I don't have the perspective YC has. That's a possibility. I don't believe that's likely, and I choose to believe in myself and my idea.
Even so, feeling like an outsider to this "magical world" of YC is tough. Especially when you spend 40 days through the application period mentally aligning yourself, and convincing yourself that this is really somewhere you and your idea belong. The adjustment period when they say, "no it isn't" takes some getting used to.
But more shocking than this personal readjustment is realizing that actually, no, there is no special place out there that is made just for me and my startup. That's tough, because it's nice to think there is that. Tho for every person for whom that is now a reality, 98 others it's not -- and that's a lot of pain.
My conclusion is really that YC is not that important. It can't be, because there's still so much talent outside it. It's just an image of importance that emerges when any concentration of talent occurs. It's nice to think there's a "leader" there's someone to "guide you", and yet in reality, it works to guide yourself. As people making things, we're the ones who are creating something new that didn't exist before.
That's pretty much the definition of there not being a "destination" or a "point man" for us. We're out the front, ourselves.
To all my other people now 7% (and in numerous other ways) richer, onward!
To everyone who's getting in, I feel a little sorry for you -- because they can't be as good as we imagined because there's so much talent still left on the track.
For my part, I'm happy to be in the bigger, wider world, than in a narrower one. As I read my mail this morning, a strange sense of relief washed over me. Now I can do this thing my way, at my own pace, and not worry about tracking it through a 3-month hot house, which I'm sure feels like a great opportunity, and it is, tho as for that, I'm happy on the road I'm on.
This came to mind:
two roads diverged in a yellow wood
and sorry I could not travel them both
and be one traveller long I stood
and looked down one as far as I could
to where it bent in the undergrowth
.
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
.
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
.
Robert Frost -- not of YC ;)