It takes a lot of time and energy to apply for YC, rejection without feedback hurts. Feedback could be in one line, as simple as : Not good enough team. Feedback would help with lot of decisions.<p>P.S. I will keep working on my start-up until I run out of fuel.
They get thousands of applications, it would take way too much time to answer them all. Plus, it's not like 'fix this and you'll get accepted next year'. In fact, they do state a single reason in the rejection email, it's just that it's always the same: 'there were others that seemed better'.<p>Keep working, and don't put too much value on a rejection. If anything, filling in the application itself is a nice way to think about your startup!
Their answer (a very fair reason IMO):<p><i>"Do you give feedback on application results?
We don't provide feedback on application results. If we did this, we'd spend all our time providing feedback and doing nothing else due to the volume of applications we have to process. Read this for more info about feedback."</i><p>From here: <a href="https://www.ycombinator.com/faq/#q51" rel="nofollow">https://www.ycombinator.com/faq/#q51</a><p>A more detailed explanation here too: <a href="http://www.ycombinator.com/whynot/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ycombinator.com/whynot/</a>
My mental model of how this process works is that when YC evaluates your startup you are starting at zero. It is up to you to sway them to a one. If you were rejected, that is because you didn't sway them to a one. It is probably a variety of factors, and each of those factors could have been overcome by a number of things.<p>YC would have to work backwards and figure out what it was that didn't get them to a one. Why is it up to themn to do that work for you? Also, if it was just one thing and they could put their finger on how to fix it... you probably wouldn't be rejected.
I get why they do it and I get why it hurts. Saying 'team not good enough' would imply that the rest is a recipe for acceptance. What if everything was lacking? Would you want to hear that?<p>"The whole idea, market and the complete team are all crap. Improvement on any of these factors is impossible as everything about your idea, team and execution is shit." I can't imagine that being helpful.<p>To be honest, your question and example feedback "Not good enough team" give me the image of someone who has no savvy in the field of startups that YC is involved with. That you'd think that that would be a valuable piece of feedback formulated in such a way does not really strike me as something that a founder of a successful startup would think. From what I have read and heard about YC and their projects is that having a good feeling about applications is the nr 1 requirement in the whole founding process, so maybe it was that.
Partly because feedback makes a lot of people feel worse. It's emotionally exhausting to phrase something in a tactful way.<p>Something as simple as "not good enough team" is very, very difficult to phrase properly. Maybe the team just doesn't feel smart enough. Maybe they have that one guy who they instinctively feel is a douche after meeting thousands like him, but can't explain why they feel that way. Maybe the team is smart but immature. Maybe they realize they could actually be wrong about the whole team and don't want to give false feedback.
You need to read <a href="http://www.ycombinator.com/whynot/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ycombinator.com/whynot/</a> carefully - Sounds like fair reasoning to me