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I've always liked this list. BVP is no different from most VC firms in this respect. What's unusual about them is that they're so candid about it.

I was just talking to some founders about what terribly bad judges VCs are, compared to how confident they seem. They're in the same position as governments. All governments are horribly inefficient, but they don't realize it because their only competitors are other governments.

Come to think of it, this may be changing. Now that startups are so cheap to run, companies rejected by VCs are increasingly likely to survive to embarrass them.




Do you know of any companies you haven't accepted into YC that have been particularly successful?


Here's one that was successful, though not in the traditional sense: Damien Katz applied to YC with his Couch DB idea and got rejected (http://damienkatz.net/2006/11/how_not_to_pitc.html), but now he works for IBM and gets to do CouchDB full-time (http://damienkatz.net/2008/01/new_gig.html).


" Damien Katz applied to YC with his Couch DB idea and got rejected (http://damienkatz.net/2006/11/how_not_to_pitc.html), "

His blog entry on the YC rejection is dated 11th January 2006. The one on the IBM job is dated 1st january 2008.

So Damien essentially took the rejection in his stride, didn't bother whining, and kept on hacking.

Very impressive.


I don't know of any offhand, but I bet there are some.


I'm glad they are humble enough to provide that information.

What do you think of the idea that companies that are cheap to run may face stiffer competition and thus never really gain a large chunk of the market, thereby never making it "astronomically" big.

At one point the network effect will come into play as well as consolidations down the line but it's an interesting thought.




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