Indeed, she credits your blog post for giving her "confidence that someone else had done it before" (and noting that your situation "was way worse")!
I'm glad you both took time to share your stories. There are so many factors, known and unknown, that influence these kinds of outcomes. But, as pg has written [0], the one constant is simply ... DON'T GIVE UP!
Yeah--not very YC of them to discourage me. But then again, I didn't seem like I was YC material at the moment they talked to me. I'm glad PB and my interview team took a chance on me though, I'm still going strong!!
I swear there was a comment here earlier--did they delete it? Hey! Any comments? This was my first stab at writing a personal blog post and the most difficult for me. I hope it helps everyone keep their head up!!
Thoroughly enjoyable! The voice you're writing with here is really fun and easy to read. I hope that feedback makes it easier for you to keep writing more with confidence!
Just as a heads up, on Roo's landing page there is one screenshot has a typo on the button. "Rread More." :-)
nicely written, made me want to root for you :) also really nice to see people succeeding in solving "unusual" (for the sv tech startup crowd) problems.
Presumably you told your co-founder after his email that you've actually secured $100k in funding.
What was his reason for not coming back was financial concerns and general uncertainty? I would imagine $100k would solves both of this issues for most people.
This is just my guess: now with the funding, there is a need to increase time commitment. I don't know the financial situation of the other cofounder but with 5 kids, man, doing startup for little pay is not an option. I guess the salary is little to none in this case but require full-time.
He never knew we raised $100k nor got into YC (until sometime in the Spring of '14). It wouldn't have mattered. If you are in, you're in. If you're out, you're out. It shouldn't be conditional.
EDIT: I commented before reading the whole thing! Glad the blog post helped. And I'll bet your story will in turn help others. :)
I'm really surprised two YC founders gave you advice to throw in the towel. Doesn't seem very YC-like. Glad you didn't!