From the feedback from YC, lack of MRR isn’t the takeaway, and I think both OP and a lot of people on this thread aren’t getting that.

I would recommend “hustling” for a period of time before the interview, rather than as a reaction to the outcome of it :)

Yes, you are off. Our apps submitted metric is growing.

The reason we started sending out emails to remind people of the deadlines is the sheer # of founders we talk to in person and over email that complain that they missed the application deadline and they didnt know when the date would be.

Questions about when the app deadline is, if you can submit late, when the deadline is for the following batch, etc is the #1 most common type of question in our support queue, and sending out reminders seemed like the best solution.

I'm the head of admissions at YC and I can assure you that a huge percentage of the companies that we interview and fund are at idea stage.

One explanation I have for why it my appear the startups we fund are "far along" at demo day is that the startups moved so quickly during the batch. For example, the startup Inokyo in the current batch recently put out a video of the autonomous store they built in Mountain View: https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/16/inokyo/ When we funded this startup 3 months ago it was for a different idea and so they quite literally started from scratch.

Startups moving fast should hopefully seem far along by demo day, irrespective of their starting point :)

>a huge percentage

A hard number would say more than that phrase :)

that is correct.

If you have already submitted your application and then your startup has material changes to the idea, new cofounders, huge progress, etc. you can email us using this form https://www.ycombinator.com/contact/ and we will make sure to make note of what has changed since you submitted.

Is Medium forcing sign-in to view blog posts a new thing, or have I just never noticed it before? https://i.imgur.com/VreES7R.png

Hm..I have never seen this message too. Maybe a new one.

I appreciate both of your sentiments, thank you.

I continue to be at least somewhat optimistic that non ad-supported models are worth trying. It seems like Patreon is doing really well and is perhaps something we can all learn from.

I paid into the very beginning. It was never useful to me. I don't regret spending the money to see if it could work.

For me, the lack of apps/integrations made it essentially impossible for me to get the people I wanted to talk to on there on to there.

But I'm really glad you tried, I'm even more glad you've documented what did and didn't work, and I definitely got value for money.

Good luck with whatever's next.

Yeah, for app.net I think it was more chicken and egg that killed you than paid per se. Pay presents an especially difficult chicken and egg problem because not only do you have to get people to part with their time to sign up you have to ask them to pay for what may potentially be no value provided.

I remember trying to explain why it wasn't a stupid idea to people way back when it launched on HN, and had kind of assumed that it'd died years ago.

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Hypothesis: If you can find a way to provide value while you build up the network, the product would do better.

Second hypothesis: If you can find a way to acquire valuable users with a low-effort funnel and 'leech' users with a paid funnel that would also make the product perform better.

Taking these as assumptions for a moment, this would imply a natural advantage for federated networks if they provide interoperability between different services that have value on their own without network effects.

I followed what you were doing at app.net with great interest when it launched. We were also building an app platform, but with a very different focus. https://qbix.com/platform . All our business models are NOT ad supported. Ads are "begging" the user to spend their time and maybe spend money. There are many ways to make money if you make apps for local communities.

We sort of took the tortoise approach to development, and this seems to have helped solve the chicken and egg problem with the userbase.

I will email you about it.

Let me also add - I'm really thankful that you tried so hard to make it work. I really had hopes for it but I guess, the environment was not right.

somewhat related: someone on facebook pointed out that XCP is pushing a lot of small transactions on the network and pointed me to this link: https://www.blockscan.com/charts_transaction_all

that is correct, I went from part-time partner to fulltime partner