Why we applied to YC despite having gone through another accelerator

As a YC B2B alum, not totally impartial, but also not totally uninformed. I think you may have the wrong take-away from your experience.<p>I&#x27;m sorry you had a bad experience in LA. I agree a lot of the stuff you wrote about that accelerator sounds like unconscionable bullshit. The amazing thing is it is far from the worst I&#x27;ve read about. I&#x27;m glad you realize it was crappy.<p>Yes, there are ways to bootstrap a B2B business: early sales&#x2F;revenue. The risk is becoming a consultancy, or losing your market to someone who is better funded. I wouldn&#x27;t say you <i>have to</i> raise (even for consumer), but I also wouldn&#x27;t say you shouldn&#x27;t, and in the current market, raising is probably the best choice for someone who fits the scale&#x2F;size&#x2F;winner-take-all model, even in B2B.<p>2.9%? Why does a specific percentage matter? If someone takes 10% and tanks your business, that&#x27;s bad. If I could get YC level value-add (network, advice, reputation) as a developer tool company focused on startups for 25% of common from a huge value-add investor, I&#x27;d seriously consider it. But of course I&#x27;d rather take YC for 7% and all the other YC benefits.

This is a good example of how bad many accelerators are, but extrapolating based on that experience to thinking that he knows anything about YC is a major error. This is a bit like saying, &quot;I had a bad time drinking bleach, therefore you should avoid all liquids.&quot;

I don&#x27;t think YC cares about growth, or if you&#x27;re early&#x2F;late stage (yeah I know this goes against what the president said..but hear me out). We also got refused being a B2B startup with extreme growth and only less than 6 months old solving a real world problem. The difference is that our startup was boring web SaaS, without any crazy tech or AI. If you look at their latest batch most companies are hardware, biotech, energy, or some batshit crazy algorithm AI buzzwordy startup. They&#x27;re going deep and risking a lot, and this is probably what I would do too if I had a big fund 8 years later.<p>Quora got in YC after already raising many rounds and through other accelator..but that was 2 years ago when YC wasn&#x27;t 100% crazy tech only yet: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;05&#x2F;11&#x2F;quora-y-combinator&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;05&#x2F;11&#x2F;quora-y-combinator&#x2F;</a>

Aside from your confusing logic, it drives me nuts that half my screen is your body shot while I&#x27;m supposed to be reading your blog post. Very distracting. Sorry if this is nonconstructive.

I assume you plan on raising money? In your case, you would likely get even more than a 6% valuation bump, making YC worth it on that alone.<p>I think there are some key details missing in this post which make it hard to tell why you were in fact rejected. In addition to the accelerator, you&#x27;ve also been going at it for 3+ years, and are only now hitting 1M For B2B, that is unfortunately on the really slow end of things for growth (read Jason Lemkins quora posts for whay to expect for typical bootstrapped busineeses). The fact that you&#x27;re a leader already in this market, and growth is that slow, is maybe an indicator the market doesn&#x27;t have much potential. On the other hand it might also just be that you&#x27;re in a market that is new, so the potential is there and others just don&#x27;t see it.

I do not understand how YC is anything at all like Paypal.

Now it&#x27;s not so convincing piece of advice when you say &quot;Never do an accelerator&quot;, when you just applied for one and got rejected, is it?

Since he didn&#x27;t link to it himself, for those curious, Karthik&#x27;s company is <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;welink.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;welink.com&#x2F;</a> - location-based social media monitoring. e.g., sentiment within a sports stadium or shopping mall.

You missed an opportunity to explain what your startup does, no link in the blog entry, blog only contains that one entry. Also +3 years at it is not a good indicator for getting at YC which as per Sam&#x27;s post prefers very early startups but good luck anyways.

Posted this on his comment form:<p>Karthik, disclosure, I was a YC founder.<p>It doesn’t seem very thoughtful to say never pay more than 3%, full stop. If you get more than 3% value out of the incubator, it’s often a good idea to pay more than 3%. You should make the decision after talking to many people who’ve chosen the incubator, and there are many companies that will say they got much more than 7% benefit out of YC – and also companies that didn’t.<p>It’d be great if every incubator charges much less than they do today, but I’m doubtful it’s a perfectly competitive market, with stickiness in things like alumni networks and reputation (it does seem like it has some similarities to the education market). Entrepreneurs would obviously benefit from more competition amongst incubators – and maybe you’re right that change is at hand.<p>I’m sorry that you didn’t get in to YC specifically (and maybe it wasn’t the right idea to apply, if you felt so strongly about how incubators provided so little value) – but I hope you won’t let your disappointment and anger get in the way of thoughtful business decisions, including in cases like future customer rejections.<p>Anyway, back to building our businesses – good luck with your own!