[mkolodny]

> Being accepted to Ycombinator is not a signal that your business will be successful in the long term. It might help in the short run being accepted as your instantly validated and have a higher chance of getting VC funding.

If you mean that getting accepted to YC doesn't guarantee that your business will be successful long-term, then I agree completely. Getting into YC is definitely a signal that it will be successful, however. That's why you have a higher chance of getting VC funding.

> Entrepreneurs you shouldn't let getting rejected from Y combinator or any other accelerator bother you. You should consider the feedback they give and try to validate it and if what they are saying is true, try to correct what is wrong.

There's nothing wrong with letting rejection bother you. It's what you do after you get rejected that matters. I think your suggestion to consider any feedback you get, and adjust what you're doing based on that feedback is awesome advice.

> Consider one other point, while Y combinator partners are successful they are really not that successful. They haven't achieved as much as Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page,Jack Ma etc. If Y combinator partners were really successful they would be running multi billion dollar companies, but they are using their skills to filter out applicants to Y combinator. So don't take their rejection as the law.

As we saw in YogaTrail's rejection letter, even YC knows that their rejection isn't the law - "we are often wrong in our decisions". On the other hand, while the YC partners may not be as "successful" as Elon Musk and Bill Gates, YC is a billion dollar company[1]. So, the YC partners are technically running a billion dollar company.

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/25/y-combinator-13-7b-valuatio.... ~7% of ~$14B is ~$1B.

[joshvm]

The application process is probably similar to large companies like Google and Facebook. The barrier is high, but not stupendously - you have to be good and a little bit lucky. Certainly Google aims for a very low false positive rate when hiring; plenty of top people get rejected, but that's the only way you ensure you don't hire chaff by mistake.

As the saying goes "You don't need to outrun the bear, you just need to outrun your friends". YC only has a finite amount of money, and presumably an annual budget. If you're good, but there are 30 companies better than you who take up that money then you're out of luck.

[boomzilla]

7% of first round investment is definitely not 7% of current valuation. Also a lot of that 1B is paper money: the later rounds often get preferred shares and preferences in exiting events. YC got common shares as the employees, and if you are around long enough, you'll know how those common shares are worth in most cases.

[mkolodny]

Great point. So maybe not a billion dollar company, but pretty close.