I realize it's easy to craft a story that somehow connects all of your unsuccessful projects into some narrative that indicts your skills. Don't go there. I know it's hard. Just don't.

I'm a mentor for a much less prestigious accelerator program, I've sold a company, I've selected companies for our local angel network, and I've had business ideas flop, funding doors close, and (much earlier) been rejected from schools I wanted to attend.

A few lessons learned:

1) application processes at this scale are very inaccurate at picking successful companies. at some level you entered a lottery with a merit component. that doesn't mean YOU got a fair, deep, true look.

2) investors/mentors surprisingly often don't necessarily know wtf they're talking about. When they're in an area they don't know about, some of them get hyper critical and knee jerk dismissive. Take any criticisms with a grain of salt. Since you don't know who at YC saw your app, you can't judge their ability to judge it. If you want to double-check your work, get feedback from someone who has built a similar business... that means the business drivers were the same (if consumer- same traffic gen strategies; if b2b- selling into same spot in similar orgs).

3) Startups are truly 50% skill and 50% luck. The key is to stay lean so you can stay in the game, solve the smallest problem that's interesting (@ev), and get it in front of real users and iterate.

Keep your head down and keep learning, and luck will find you. It's a cliche, but I'll just say it because it's true in my experience: people who succeed are willing to do things that others won't. You're at a point where you may have to make some tough decisions about how to manage your time. If you believe there's merit in your business, make the sacrifices to continue working on it.

Woke up this morning to a rejection email. The good news is that this means I have successfully achieved my New Year's Resolution of failing more. The bad news is that it doesn't make failing any easier!

We didn't even hear about Y-Combinator until the week before, but I'd echo notdarkyet's comments about how you start to dream. Either way, the process has already been a very worthwhile exercise, without which I would t have discovered Hacker News, so there are a lot of positives to take away.

Unlike notdarkyet I go back to a very well paying job, but that's a curse in itself because it makes it far too easy to become complacent and comfortable.

I guess I just need to find the next thing to fail at until next round :-)

Just to put it out there - why not continue on the rejected idea?

YCombinator are good, but not infallible. Just because they reject your application doesn't guarantee that your idea doesn't have legs.

Thanks for the suggestions - we absolutely will be doing. Though I didn't apply to Y-Combinator because I thought the idea needed validation, or because I needed the money, I applied for two main reasons:

1. I feel the programme represents the best possible start for the company, the buzz of being around so many super smart people with a constant focus on delivery would help make it a success.

2. The programme would provide a framework for the transition we need to make from a corporate job to startup world. No matter what anyone tells you, it's extremely difficult to give a startup enough attention when you're doing it "on-the-side" of a big four corporate job due to the sheer number of hours (let alone the regulations). It's also very hard to leave a six-figure tax-free salary at 27 under current economic conditions without a framework for a transition.

I recognise that 2. is a complete excuse regardless of its merits. Given that I don't want to be sitting around at 70 wondering why I never did what I truly wanted to, I now have a lot of thinking to do about where to take this - i.e. take the plunge and self fund; minimise workload to bare minimum to find some time to work on the side; find a startup in Silicon Valley to join to move in the right direction.

Did You apply before or after the deadline?

Two days before...

Keep on keepin' on. Your rejection is in no way a foreshadow of your success or failure. This time last year I found out my company got accepted into an accelerator. A year later the business is a failure and a bunch of companies that got rejected are still going.

People that run incubators are amazing human beings, but they're not fortune tellers.

At the end of the day YC is just a business with the same goal as every other, to make money. They pick people and ideas aligned with their own interests. It also seems to be that a large part of it is to find companies that are easy to pitch at demo day for future investment.

It isn't a charity and given the number of applicants the chances are high that some other team has a more sellable or easier to market plan. For most of us that didn't get in the worst possible outcome is a bruised ego. Keep on working and see it as a chance to have a friendly competition with the companies that did get in this batch :)

Find a startup! I'm sure there are plenty of lessons to learn :)

kudos to you for pursuing your dream; even if you do go back to a job again, I'm sure you'll keep pushing forward somehow, some way... wishing you future success!