We got rejected from YC S19! Bummer, right?
Our product VEED - an online video editor had been doing really well recently. Over the space of a year, we had a 60% MoM Growth Rate, 35K MAU and a great team!
In March, we submitted our application, and kinda forgot about it.
Two months later we got an email saying that a partner would like to speak to us. A few days later we were having a chat with Michael Seibel (CEO of Ycombinator). The call went well, Michael seemed to like what we're doing, as he himself had a long history working with video startups: Justin TV, which later became Twitch (sold to Amazon) as well as Socialcam (sold to Autodesk).
A few days after the initial call we got the email from YC inviting us to Silicon Valley to meet the partners for the final stage of the YC interviews. As you can imagine, for two young founders who just quit their jobs, we were ecstatic!
We booked our flights, and a few weeks later we landed in SF airport and got an Uber to our overpriced Airbnb in Mountain View. We spent one day prepping for our interview and before we knew it, the interview day had arrived.
The interview was intense, it lasted just 10 mins and in that time you are bombarded with questions from all sides of the room.
The vulnerable parts of your startup are uncovered in the first 30 seconds and from there on they keep digging deeper.
After the interview we took a moment to reflect, we thought it went ok. By no means did we think it was a home run, but we thought we were in with a chance. Then we took the mandatory photo with the YC sign and left.
We had planned to spend another day in Mountain View near the YC office but could not deal with hanging around in the quiet suburban town. So we packed our bags and headed for the City.
We checked into our hostel and chilled out in our room waiting for a response.
Here's the deal, If you get rejected you get an email and if you get in you receive a phone call. 6 pm arrived and we were constantly refreshing our emails and checking our phones.
The wait was driving us insane, so we went to the local liquor store and grabbed a few beers to ease the wait.On our return, we got the email, as you know, we got rejected from YC
We updated our team, friends, and family, and then over a few bottles of wine, we hatched a master plan. Ok, that plan was pretty bad and almost illegible.
The next morning we hatched a better plan. From the rejection email, we thought that the only negative point letting us down was the fact that we had no MRR.
Therefore, we thought that if we can get the first paying users and MRR over the weekend and get back to YC next Monday morning, they would see that we had achieved MRR in only a few days. Additionally, we would look like a team that could move fast, listen to feedback, and get stuff done.
But at this point in time, it was not guaranteed that we could get MRR over just one weekend, let alone build an entire infrastructure that is necessary for it in time.
This was the new plan, a sober plan.
We knew it was a long shot but it was worth a go!
To try and hustle our way back into YC we had to do the following:
- Build payments and account system
- Convert 10 paying users
- Send an email to YC and for them to read it.
And If we did all this in time, we might be in with a shot (another shot)
Friday 11:00 am
So at 11:00 am on Friday morning, we opened our laptops, grabbed strong coffees, and started programming.
Saturday 2:00 am
By 2:00 am Saturday morning we had payments and video watermarks integrated. We did not want to deploy on little sleep, so thought we should tidy the final bits up in the morning and deploy when on a clear head.
Saturday 1:00 pm
By 1:00 pm on Saturday having spent a few hours testing and fixing a few bugs we were, finally, ready to push our changes live. At 1 pm Saturday afternoon we deployed the app with our first paid feature.
Saturday 1:01 pm
By 1:01 pm we got our first paid users! I ran around the room like a kid who just arrived at Disneyland. Tim was so happy he could finally go nap after programming for so long. BUT, it turns out stripe was in test mode. F******.
Saturday 2:00 pm
By 2:00 pm stripe was out of test mode and our server invalidation was taking effect. And that was it, our first paid users came officially in the bag!!!
Over the weekend, we hit our mailing list and added a banner to the top of the site.
By Monday morning at 8 am we had 20 paid users (Not a bad result right?)
Then on Monday at 9 am on the dot we emailed the YC partner who sent us the feedback and asked them to reconsider.
This was the email we sent.
Regardless of what the result was going to be, we felt like we were going to leave San Francisco better off than when we arrived. We had positive feedback from YC, we now had paying users and we were moving fast and feeling even more driven.
At around 5pm we got another email from YC. They said they were unable to change their decision but would happily do office hours with us before the next batch.
We walked away feeling like we gave it our all and on the plus side, we had our first MRR and also the opportunity to run office hours with YC before the next batch.
In hindsight, maybe we were too early for YC and their decision was just. We believe that YC are looking for companies that are ready to accelerate and we were just not ready.
It is also good to remember that the goal of a startup is not to get into YC.
The goal of a startup is to build something amazing. After this, we headed to a local bar, had a few beers, and reminisced about what a crazy week it had been.
