If you applied on a "Let's see if we can convince Paul to let us come to YC Summer Camp, and maybe we'll be rich this time next year" whim with not a lot of code written...maybe you go back to school and work on other ideas. Try again for Winter with a different idea or more code and a better presentation. Or apply for a job at an existing startup. Some of the WFP guys are hiring (Parakey, Zenter, and a few others) as are the Xobni guys from last years progem--all are wicked smart, have lined up some funding, and would be very helpful to you in your goal of becoming an entrepreneur.
If, on the other hand, you've already written mumble-thousand LoC, and you are within a couple of months of launching, and you really believe in your idea and product, contact some other angels and seed investors. They exist. They aren't as cool as YC, but they have money and they have connections, too. As a last resort, if you're in the wrong city for raising money (anything other than Silicon Valley or Boston), warm up your credit card and give it a go. You can live for three months on a credit card (I've done it several times...I'm on my second company, the first being self-funded and sometimes credit card funded). Obviously, if you've got a family to support the "warm up your credit card" method of funding is right out. Otherwise, just keep your health insurance current, pay your taxes, and live on nothing but ramen and buy nothing between now and launch day.
If your project is too big to launch in that short time, then that's why you were rejected by YC. Winnow it down to the smallest piece that has value and launch. Our project (Virtualmin) was huge (several hundred thousand lines of code, by the time you factor in Webmin and Usermin). But we were already selling product, and figured we were within a couple of months of "finishing" the beta period (we were off by a little bit, as we're still a couple of weeks away from wrapping it up six months later--partly because of the major strategy shifts we made during WFP2007).
If you applied on a "Let's see if we can convince Paul to let us come to YC Summer Camp, and maybe we'll be rich this time next year" whim with not a lot of code written...maybe you go back to school and work on other ideas. Try again for Winter with a different idea or more code and a better presentation. Or apply for a job at an existing startup. Some of the WFP guys are hiring (Parakey, Zenter, and a few others) as are the Xobni guys from last years progem--all are wicked smart, have lined up some funding, and would be very helpful to you in your goal of becoming an entrepreneur.
If, on the other hand, you've already written mumble-thousand LoC, and you are within a couple of months of launching, and you really believe in your idea and product, contact some other angels and seed investors. They exist. They aren't as cool as YC, but they have money and they have connections, too. As a last resort, if you're in the wrong city for raising money (anything other than Silicon Valley or Boston), warm up your credit card and give it a go. You can live for three months on a credit card (I've done it several times...I'm on my second company, the first being self-funded and sometimes credit card funded). Obviously, if you've got a family to support the "warm up your credit card" method of funding is right out. Otherwise, just keep your health insurance current, pay your taxes, and live on nothing but ramen and buy nothing between now and launch day.
If your project is too big to launch in that short time, then that's why you were rejected by YC. Winnow it down to the smallest piece that has value and launch. Our project (Virtualmin) was huge (several hundred thousand lines of code, by the time you factor in Webmin and Usermin). But we were already selling product, and figured we were within a couple of months of "finishing" the beta period (we were off by a little bit, as we're still a couple of weeks away from wrapping it up six months later--partly because of the major strategy shifts we made during WFP2007).