Interesting. I applied to YC with https://icanpriceit.com/, not much traction yet. I was hoping I'd get an interview at least, based in part on my existing experience of building an ecommerce/Amazon business to 100k in sales (plus my answer to the "hack" question was pretty good).
I didn't get invited. I know that https://www.ycombinator.com/whynot/ says I pretty much can't get a direct answer why, but my own takeaways were that one of the following must be true. Either:
1. Solo founder+no traction was just too low to meet their bar.
2. I messed up some other part of the application, which is very possible.
or
3. 100k in sales isn't that impressive, relative to the kinds of impressive things other founders did; and the fact that it's not the startup I applied under dilutes the achievement.
Now in the month and a half since I applied, sales (on my amazon business) have jumped and I'm looking at close to a $1 million ARR (~$4500 sales today, ~$22500 sales 7 days, ~$78000 sales 30 days, majority of which are from nonseasonal, replenished products, so can reasonably extrapolate yearly i.e. no Q4 boost). Maybe in 5 months that will be impressive enough to get an invite, at least, assuming I still want YC. Without funding I likely won't be doing too much work on the startup and will mostly focus on my existing business and college.
(I actually talked to Aaron briefly after a talk in NYC, he said I shouldn't worry too much about being a solo founder.)
>Repeat founders who were previously funded
Interesting. I applied to YC with https://icanpriceit.com/, not much traction yet. I was hoping I'd get an interview at least, based in part on my existing experience of building an ecommerce/Amazon business to 100k in sales (plus my answer to the "hack" question was pretty good).
I didn't get invited. I know that https://www.ycombinator.com/whynot/ says I pretty much can't get a direct answer why, but my own takeaways were that one of the following must be true. Either:
1. Solo founder+no traction was just too low to meet their bar.
2. I messed up some other part of the application, which is very possible.
or 3. 100k in sales isn't that impressive, relative to the kinds of impressive things other founders did; and the fact that it's not the startup I applied under dilutes the achievement.
Now in the month and a half since I applied, sales (on my amazon business) have jumped and I'm looking at close to a $1 million ARR (~$4500 sales today, ~$22500 sales 7 days, ~$78000 sales 30 days, majority of which are from nonseasonal, replenished products, so can reasonably extrapolate yearly i.e. no Q4 boost). Maybe in 5 months that will be impressive enough to get an invite, at least, assuming I still want YC. Without funding I likely won't be doing too much work on the startup and will mostly focus on my existing business and college.
(I actually talked to Aaron briefly after a talk in NYC, he said I shouldn't worry too much about being a solo founder.)