SamA needs to do an Anti-Portfolio :-) -- <a href="http://www.bvp.com/portfolio/antiportfolio" rel="nofollow">http://www.bvp.com/portfolio/antiportfolio</a>
The Ionic team applied to YC before we were Ionic (back w/ Codiqa, our visual design tool for jQuery Mobile apps). I was freaking out since they didn't email us until the day after the interview! I guess we were right on the edge.<p>Oh well, was a fun experience and we've been successful w/o it.<p>(for reference: <a href="http://ionicframework.com/" rel="nofollow">http://ionicframework.com/</a>)
As a sort of real-time answer, my startup[1][2] just had a booth at the NMX/NAB show in Las Vegas and completely blew up from a user acquisition perspective, and had applied to this upcoming round without getting an interview. We wanted to sign about 8 blogs in order to cover the costs of going to the show, and wound up signing over 1200 blogs, 5 major retailers, a couple licensing deals, and a lot of smaller retailers (some fashion startups among them) whose products we could list in our catalog.<p>I'm kind of glad that the interview wasn't even an option, since we're based out of San Diego and it simplifies the logistics of our operations for not having to move to SF for a period. Having no idea of how NMX/NAB was going to go, YC seemed like the best way to get our idea out there whilst getting their great support system. Now, we can just go heads-down in development and prepare for our June release.<p>It's always extremely discouraging to get rejections -- we got rejected from EvoNexus[3], TechCrunch Disrupt NY, and YCombinator (twice). This pretty much tells me that I'm horrible at filling out applications. I'd like to think that if the YC partners had walked up and talked to us at our booth, we would have definitely gotten the interview.<p>This Vegas trip was the most amazing thing that has happened since I came up with the idea of pleenq[4], because we barely had to sell the product -- people were so excited by the possibilities it would bring, and about all the monetization opportunities it opens up. Most of our customers were referrals from others who had seen our booth, and were told to "make sure they saw pleenq before they left the show". I closed every single person I talked to at our booth over the 4 days of the show, which was basically the highest form of encouragement I could have hoped for.<p>[1] <a href="https://facebook.com/pleenq" rel="nofollow">https://facebook.com/pleenq</a> and <a href="http://pleenq.com" rel="nofollow">http://pleenq.com</a><p>[2] Demo of PLEENQ that we showed at NAB/NMX: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wu4gaiaA7I" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wu4gaiaA7I</a><p>[3] A San Diego-based incubator that takes 0% equity and is really great for startups with a little bit of traction<p>[4] Pleenq lets you tag items in any image on the internet and link them to where they can be purchased
Couchbase (then CouchOne) seems to be doing pretty well. SendGrid, Buffer, Storenvy, are others that come to mind.<p>I think that there are more founders that were rejected by YC that became successful, not startups.
I’ll bite and say my firm CastingWords ( <a href="http://castingwords.com" rel="nofollow">http://castingwords.com</a> )<p>Even though just existing 9 years after the interview would have been a failure condition for our build to flip mindset at the time - but today it’s paying the founders salaries and still providing intersting challenges - so a success as we define it.<p>And it must be said that the advice we got in our interview (that we rejected - no doubt one of the reasons we were turned down) was dead on - not just for what it would take to make the company a successful startup, but also for seeing some of the challenges in the road ahead. Just the interview was a fantastically useful.<p>And the fact that we rejected the advice was probably a good indicator that what we really wanted out of our company was not a startup, but rather a platform to play with interesting technology and business problems and make money doing it. Startups really aren’t for everyone. YC was part of us discovering that.
I think SendGrid initially applied to YC before getting into TechStars. See <a href="http://www.quora.com/Why-was-SendGrid-rejected-from-YCombinator" rel="nofollow">http://www.quora.com/Why-was-SendGrid-rejected-from-YCombina...</a>
I have been rejected each and every time I have applied, and have submitted with various ideas/projects. However, the most recent project is patent-pending software that allows drivers to hire ticket defense law firms without the need for human involvement. The proverbial...Rocket Lawyer for Ticket Defense.<p>Our software has been live since September with a Florida Ticket Defense Firm we have seen great traction and growth (400 clients in the last 90 days), and we appear to be on schedule to offer our software to law firms nationwide starting next month. I am not sure to date this could be defined as a success in the YC sense, we have had no funding, we have had no media coverage, no VCs on the board...but there has been local market adoption of our product and the potential to scale this seems attainable even if boot-strapping.<p>Edit: To be clear I am not saying YC defines success as funding, or media coverage...but show me a YC company that has achieved anyones definition of success without getting Funding and media coverage as a step along the way.
Munchery was rejected by YC after the interview[1], and they have since become arguably the most successful and fastest-growing[2] "prepared food" startup in Silicon Valley and the US.<p>(More than Sprig, despite Sprig receiving significantly more tech press coverage.)<p>[1] <a href="https://medium.com/@munchery/pitch-your-life-2f170eab933b" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/@munchery/pitch-your-life-2f170eab933b</a><p>[2] They raised a $28 million Series B round this time last year.
The team at Keen.io recently shared a fantastic blog post about being rejected on stage at YC startup school, and their success since then: <a href="https://keen.io/blog/116400439081/lessons-from-a-failed-yc-pitch-with-paul-graham" rel="nofollow">https://keen.io/blog/116400439081/lessons-from-a-failed-yc-p...</a>
Depends on what you mean by success. If you mean being a profitable bootstrapped business there are probably tons of companies. Companies that went on raise series A and beyond some companies might be out there.<p>However I have feeling success for YC is having a company become a Unicorn. The question to ask is which startups that didn't get into YC are now Unicorns.
Some friends of mine started www.overleaf.com, and were rejected by YC a while later. They haven't had an exit yet, but as far as I can tell they're doing exceptionally well.
I think the guys from <a href="https://www.Pay4Bugs.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.Pay4Bugs.com</a> did. I'm a user of theirs (crowdsourced bug testing for apps / websites / software)...<p>They've been developing tons of new features and seem to be getting more and more major positive press every week.<p>But if nothing else, this is definitely one of those 'invest in the founders' situations... Larry and CS are crazy smart and are now at that solid <i>experienced-but-not-too-old</i> age.
I'm surprised by how few are listed here and that "successful" wasn't even defined by any parameters in the initial question and no one has mentioned that yet. Does successful mean profitable? Reached some revenue target? Has grown organically by some amount? Didn't fail?