The Origin Story
Over a small Winter break, I’d never expect that I would be starting this endeavour from a DM I had on Reddit. However, I think there is something for me and for everyone to learn from this journey. I’m Avi Agola. I’m 17, and I always had a thing for Entrepreneurship. Over the last year, I’d tried building my first startup, FinWheel. To put it short, FinWheel was not able to pick up traction well. Overtime, the burden of having invested a lot of time into this project got to me and I burned out. You’d think, “oh boo hoo, another sob story”, however, I wasn’t sobbing about it. From my experience, I got a lot of technology credits, got to meet a lot of founders and took great advice from VCs.
1. So why this? why now?
Well, we are in a new age of startups. As we head into 2025, the rate of investments in the once famed venture capital has declined 35% YoY. The age of building AI tech startups, saw development in proper technology but also created large investments into “AI Startups” that burn money and shut down.
Founders have always had the notion of needing Venture Capital to start a new business and think getting investment or having representation from an Accelerator is the way of going up in the world of startups. In reality, the opposite is true.
2. So Why Target YCombinator?
YCombinator is the biggest and most influential startup accelerator in the world (Sorry TechStars). To the average startup founder, YCombinator seems like a gateway to Silicon Valley and in many instances, it has been. It’s funded over 3000 companies in it’s existence and people obsess on the chance of getting in.
3. Why would I care about the rejects?
The rejects that I interview turn out to find success in different ways. Some of these rejects get into YCombinator in the next round. Some of them get into different startup accelerators and see success. Some of them never actually take any funding and build their business from the ground up. And some of them find god, and never come back to entrepreneurship.
4. What do I get out of this?
I can promise that I will try to interview one founder who was rejected from YCombinator every week and publish my findings and thoughts to the community. You will also get access to free guides on how to start your own startup, from ideation, to building, to sales. My goal from this is that we get new perspectives on the world of startups, see if YCombinator is over-rated, and learn about how we can think, build, iterate and serve our world in a more efficient way.
5. What if I like and want to support your idea?
If you like this newsletter and receive weekly updates of my findings, go down below and subscribe to Rejected By YC. I can assure you that I won’t let you down.
You can catch new episodes of Rejected By YC every Wednesday at 6PM Pacific, starting on January 15th, 2025.
If you REALLY like this newsletter and want to support this effort, you can subscribe to become a paid member and receive access to our Discord Server of Founders and Startup Geeks and get extra podcast and newsletter content each week.
Thanks for reading Rejected By YC! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Share this post