[oskarth]

YC: Unfortunately, we were unable to get to believing that you had a strategy for supplanting Yelp as the top Google search results — having worked on SEO extensively in the past a better product often times isn’t enough. // You clearly have a product that is better than what else is out there. I encourage you to spend more time on figuring out customer acquisition (possibly through non-search channels). In any case, we are often wrong in our decisions, and I hope that you continue to build your business and wish you the best in doing so.

YT: The feedback about beating Yelp in Google Search results and looking for ways to get customers other than search channels – pretty solid indicators that they hadn’t understood what we had told them.

To me this seems like a pretty solid indicator that they (YT) hadn't understand the feedback they were getting, or knew what to do with it. This is a shame since it makes YC less likely to give feedback in the future.

Embrace feedback, don't explain it away. Especially if you are a fragile upstart.