Alternatives
Products that do what A site for YC rejection stories does
Got rejected from YC a few times, so I built a site to collect lessons, reflections, and what people would do differently next time. Thought it could be helpful since most founders apply more than once anyway :) Hope it's helpful: https://ycrejection.com/
- 1MP
http://invincibilitee.com Me and my co-founder submitted an app for YC W11, with a web site that would help college graduates figure out what jobs they could get with their chosen degree. We got a rejection email, and already had this as a back-up idea in case we did get rejected. So in the month between rejection and today, we found a printer, found some graphic designers, and got enough done that we felt comfortable with it as a first iteration. I know there aren't so many non-web app startups on HN, but I thought y'all might like to see how 2 guys rebounded from YC rejection.
2010
- 2
- 3IM
2025 · yc-sim.vercel.app
- 4
- 5
- 6WD
Hey everyone! We spent the major part of the year preparing an idea we had for the YC application. At last minute, we decided not to go through with YC. I mean, we've had our fair shares of failed startups and this was one of those make it or break it scenarios. We took everything we've ever learned and strived to make an app that we were proud of. We spent so much effort into making this app that we couldn't bear stopping short and applying to Y Combinator. (Mind you, there's nothing wrong with YC.) We didn't want to apply to Y Combinator at the last minute because if we had really gone…
2012
- 7FP
A little background. For the last 1.5 years I lost what could be considered an embarrassing amount of money hiring other people to work on a project that I thought had potential, I got some important people involved, had some great coders, but couldn't launch. The failure was depressing, rejection by YC didn't help.. I had to take a job, I didn't enjoy and I had a girlfriend who stood by me despite going into debt. But bouncing back over the last 45 days I've taught myself Rails some Jquery, and Javascript and built this www.hangout.io. It's empowering to build something myself because I'm…
2011
- 8YI
Please give me some feedback on my weekend/evening project http://ycpages.info YCPages is a CrunchBase sort of service just for YC funded companies. Company/founder details are pulled from CrunchBase using their API. I have checked founders info by looking their LinkedIn pages/Twitter etc. So i am confident 95% information available on YCPages are accurate. Next Steps, == Adding the Tech Stack info == Rankings from Alexa, Compete, Quantcast, etc If I can get the founders answer few of my question about their experience I will add them as well. Any feedback would be highly appreciated.…
2011
- 9MY
Every batch, many founders get rejected due to basic application mistakes, missing key criteria that YC partners explicitly look for. We learned this the hard way, which is why we built YC Score. Simply upload your draft PDF or fill out our YC-mirrored form. Our AI analyzes your responses against 25 critical factors that can make or break your application, from technical credentials to market validation. For instance, when YC partner Dalton Caldwell notes that teams with technical founders have "5x better odds," you need to know before submitting. YC Score flags these deal-breakers and shows…
2025 · ycscore.com
- 10FS
I started a newsletter sending out daily startup ideas. After a year, I transitioned to weekly ideas with more in-depth details. I recently posted all of them to the website and made them searchable. Check it out and let me know what you think. By providing more than just an idea, my hope is to help someone start their next business. https://www.startupsfromthebottom.com/
2020
- 11PF
I've been blown away by speech-to-speech LLMs lately and was looking for a fun little website to build. Enter mock YC interviews. When I first applied to YC, I used iPG (https://jamescun.github.io/iPG/) to practice and get comfortable with the YC-style interview. Spoiler: I ended up getting in. This took me a few hours to go from scratch to production. Would highly suggest playing around with some of the latest products (this uses Vapi.ai/elevenlabs.io)
2024 · mock-yc.vercel.app
- 12BF
Excited to announce my new project, Rally! It’s a useful community for early-stage startup founders, inspired by Y Combinator’s Bookface. Site: https://rally.socap.ai/ We think many problems that founders have can be solved 10x better through other founders, but there’s no tool/place to do that well and at scale. For example, instead of googling how to launch on PH, reading blog posts, etc., you could ask for an intro to a famous hunter who’ll explain all that and hunt your product. We're building this place + software to make it work really well. What Rally is: • A…
2024 · rally.socap.ai
- 13YI
2011 · qomments.com
- 14DE
We wanted a way to share what we had learned online (first expressed by what we had shared on twitter). So we built this. http://knowitapp.com/paulg http://knowitapp.com/foundersatwork http://knowitapp.com/paultoo http://knowitapp.com/garrytan http://knowitapp.com/gralston http://knowitapp.com/harjeet (Bonus: you can see your similarity if you login - and no we won't tweet from your account) What do you guys and gals think?
2012
- 15AD
Hey HN, I've been working on a little side project and could really use your feedback. So, I've always been fascinated by those stories of successful startups doing crazy things in their early days - you know, like Airbnb founders personally photographing listings or DoorDash founders delivering food themselves. I started collecting these stories, and before I knew it, I had a pretty big list. So I thought, "Why not turn this into a website?" And that's how https://dothingsthatdontscale.org was born. It's super basic right now - just a simple directory with about 70 examples. But…
2024 · dothingsthatdontscale.org
- 16DF
Hey all, We’ve applied to YC three times and got rejected each time. we’ll get there eventually! The main reasons for rejection were: being a solo founder (no co-founder), having no team, an MVP that wasn’t ready, or no traction in place. --- My expertise lies in building software products for startups, unicorn companies, and even governments. Throughout my years in software, I’ve had plenty of exposure to data products. I’ve faced recurring challenges like the lack of data, uncertainty around data handling, or even generating too much data and not knowing how to best utilize it to generate…
2025 · opendatabay.com
- 17HU
We built this to answer "am I a fit for this role?" after noticing how hard it is to get honest feedback when applying to a YC startup or something else entirely. It's a custom 5-minute challenge that roasts you after. Added a leaderboard for those who want to see how they stack up. Roast us below.
Oct 2025 · howuselessareyou.com
- 18IB
Hi HN, I saw joke online about wanting a version of Linkedin for failures. I thought it was a great idea, so I decided to build a simple version of it. Sinkedin is a place to post (anonymously) stories about job rejections, interview screw-ups and other carrer failures. Website: https://www.sinkedin.app/ Github: https://github.com/Preet-Sojitra/sinkedin I am not a designer, so the UI is very minimalistic. If it triggers your OCD, PRs are very welcome. The entire stack is running on free tiers, so please expect some latency if it gets any traffic. I wanted…
2025 · sinkedin.app
- 19IA
I was working on validating some of my own project ideas. While trying to find how to validate my idea, I realized the process itself could be turned into a tool. A few late nights later, I had something that takes any startup idea, fetches discussions, summarizes sentiment, and gives a quick “validation score.” It’s very rough, but it works, and it’s already making me rethink a few of my own ideas. It's still a work in progress. I don't actually know what I'm doing, but I know it's worth it. Honest feedback welcomed! Live demo here: https://validationly.com/
2025 · validationly.com
- 20IC
I saw this app youlearn.ai on YC and thought of building it. They are claiming to have 1M+ users with just one feature which is to convert your learning material into summaries, quizzes etc. I gave this a shot and cloned almost most of the features in just 9+ hours of continous vibe coding (with 20% manual though). Now I'm selling this on mvp marketplace. Might probably open source it in future or give it free.
2025 · ai-tutor.mvpwrappers.com
- 21LM
We're BETA testing our partnership portal at SeedLawyers and thought y'all might be interested in some FREEEeee... legal help. Just type "betatest" where it asks here --> https://seedlawyers.com/users/sign_up?profile_type=Founder to unlock an account with 500 credits that you can spend on calls with our lawyer members, legal questions, and DIY startup legal documents. Every bit of feedback counts :)
2018
- 22TO
LégalEd for the Masses Title links to actual app Here is the demo video to show you around the interface Self funded on scraps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIwsPz0mKAU
2025 · labs.sunami.ai
- 23ML
I made a post a few days ago asking if any software companies/start ups needed technical video tutorial writers and I had a few very interested and serious respondents email me. I've been looking for something to do with this domain hence I give myself a Christmas present.
2013 · helpknow.com
- 24IT
I created http://devtest.net as a weekend project, and I'm pretty proud of it from a technical and UI standpoint. The problem is, I've built this by myself in a bit of a vacuum, to "scratch my own itch", and I don't know if this is useful to anyone other than me. I'm also not so hot on the business side and don't really know what I'm doing. Basically, I'm looking for some advice, now that I've actually launched, what now? One thing that this has shown me is that I'm capable of putting together a pretty decent web application on my own in my spare time. Should I stick with this idea, or…
2012
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