[echelon]

Did the YC interviewers ask you about this risk?

Did they ask you about a bigger market you can move into?

There's no way this foothold will last. You're going to get massacred.

Apple WILL ban you. You're not in some capricious walled garden. You're breaking and entering, and they'll destroy you.

There is nothing of value to build here. You should take the rest of the day off, then tomorrow, pivot entirely.

The folks here are trying to save you n years of hard work and wasted effort. Please listen. You're lucky to have a YC check. Apply it somewhere else, to some other problem. Preferably not in someone else's garden, and especially not in one where they shoot to kill.

[morpheuskafka]

Seeing that YC will even fund something as risky as this, I'm going to go ahead and late apply. I have a feeling I shouldn't write that as the reason though ;)

Seriously though, this is wild. How is this different from those click farms with a wall of phones viewing livestreams or tapping on adds or whatever?

[echelon]

There might not be space left? I know of a few companies that have already been admitted, and they're filling slots fast.

I don't know how much they budget for overflow.

Don't let me discourage you. I'm just following my own suspicions. My company is at a $2M run rate and I'm thinking I shouldn't bother applying since I missed the window.

(Dang, care to comment?)

I still want OP to make the best of their time in YC and their runway. There are plenty of other great ideas out there rather than being a freight train hop-on.

[morpheuskafka]

I agree, even if they decide to persist with this, they need to grow into a more robust business (ex. focusing on the abandoned cart followup niche) than just being an API that can get shut down overnight.

And yeah it's definitely late, but I'll just take what you said as a push to actually bang it out today and try to fight my tendency to write and say way too much on those kind of things, haha. It's only half tech related anyway, similar problem space as Firstbase.

[bomewish]

Why would yc fund them given how obvious the risk is ? Esp since a Mac mini farm is capital intense.

[mynameisvlad]

YC is not some end all be all arbiter of what will succeed. Plenty of YC startups have failed.

https://ycgraveyard.iamwillwang.com/

https://startups.rip/

[echelon]

This is a "Launch HN" / "YC P26" thread, so YC funded them.

If YC didn't fund this particular idea, they funded the team to pursue some earlier idea that the team then pivoted from to try this one.

In any case, the team needs to pivot. This idea is lighting cash (and time) on fire.

[_jwr]

Little bit extreme