Is this considered unethical or against the hackernews rules?<p>We label Bandsintown as a rejected company to show perseverance and because i think there is an interest in the companies that are applying to YC wether they made it or not. I am curious to how everyone feels on this issue.
Labelling a company as having been rejected by YC is misleading, because it implies a value judgement which wasn't made. Probably 90% of the people who visit your website leave without signing up; equally, my understanding is that most startups (even successful ones) find that 90% of angels and VCs turn them down. Do you label yourself with the names of all the potential users who "rejected" you?<p>As Paul has pointed out in the past, there are many reasons why a company might not receive funding, and most of them have nothing to do with the merits of the company itself. Being not accepted by YC doesn't mean that they necessarily think there's anything wrong with you -- in this case, "not accepted" is not a synonym for "rejected".
There should be a special logo for YCombinator rejects to display. I humbly offer <a href="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1169/1251010963_4787666411_m.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1169/1251010963_4787666411_m....</a>
There was a rash of startups doing this to get attention a few months ago. After the first couple we started deleting such descriptions. It's an edge case, but probably abuse, especially considering the motive. <p>Which incidentally is probably also a large part of the motive for this post. If you were really just interested in the abstract question, you could have avoided the appearance of an ulterior motive by making this a straight question instead of linking to your original post. Want me to change that for you?
You're being silly and it makes me think you have nothing else worth talking about. There were 400+ apps to the most recent YC program...I don't want to know if you were one of them. It's relatively interesting when a company is a YC company, but is distinctly uninteresting that you took 20 minutes out of your day to fill out the application. That just tells us you had 20 minutes to spare.
Is this considered unethical or against the hackernews rules?<p>We label Bandsintown as a rejected company to show perseverance and because i think there is an interest in the companies that are applying to YC wether they made it or not. I am curious to how everyone feels on this issue.
I recommend reading the forum and just waiting around for the next time someone asks "Have we heard from any companies that got rejected and still went forward?"