alexl

Wow, we reached the limit of the sausage string. I have to reply to my own comment :)

I still believe I can do it "alone," i.e. with just that other guy. I'm just gonna go get the needed money elsewhere and forget about Y Combinator. That blog post or whatever you want to call it, is my opinion on them.

Yeah, but that whole single founder thing is so messed up. They don't really send you the message that they rarely take single founders on board. You have to find horror stories on the net. One of them is about a guy who had two other co-founders or so, but those couldn't just move for three months. They had families and lives. So the guy moves to SF and they tell him "we really hate single founders." So, if the other co-founders are not there, it's like they don't exist at all. I do have a guy, an engineer who would do a lot of the required work, but moving him to the US is an idea from another planet. He is part of the team. There's no doubt about that. He just doesn't want to be a legal co-owner. He doesn't want that responsibility. He's also much older than me and has a different perspective. But Y Combinator, suffering from ADHD, won't have the patience to consider all that. That was kinda my whole point. I'm still not sure you got it.

My point exactly - again! "They are more comfortable in that area" means "they don't actually invest outside that area." I feel I could have saved some time if I knew this before I applied for the first time.

But yeah, I get it, you can't conceive them ever being wrong, for some reason. I have nothing against that, it's an opinion and it's as personal as a haircut.

Well, I don't live in The Valley. Not in the US, actually. I thought it would be reasonable to assume that people calling themselves investors would look at anything. Right now it looks like that guy from Mountain View was right: if the iPhone's popular, everyone's doing something related to the iPhone. Which is fine, as it's their choice. But it seems that if you utter the word Blackberry, you get fined or arrested for disturbing public order. And if you even think of Nokia, Gov. A. Schwarzenegger himself will punch you in the throat.

Okay, I didn't know that. I will remember it next time I have to deal with such people. Good to know.

What I think is obviously missing? Simple, Y Combinator's main page displaying a huge banner that says "we don't care about anything non-software, go away." It would have warned me right from the start. They never explicitly say it, they just heavily hint at it (e.g. they ask for your github ID, which you don't need unless you do some sort of coding) and I'm here to say quit hinting and just admit it out loud. But I believe that's also typical - what we hint at, it's actually an axiom. What we recommend, it's actually required. I believe that's not right. Simple as that. No hard feelings.

I sincerely hope that you did get the point - that was a "kamikaze" application not meant to get me in, but meant to get them out of their self righteous loop! You appear to not have read the whole thing. Okay, you didn't have to, of course. But you completely proved my point: that's what they also do. This is why I tried my best to get their attention woken up at least for this one application. Maybe they'll start waking up before reading other applications in the future, as well! I believe they never got the point that this is not a programming-centered idea. Not a software startup at all. I want to make hardware, to put it shortly.

Not meaning to brag, but I applied for another incubator as well, and got to the last stage. I was dumped there, but they did say I came across as technically strong and with relevant and solid experience. Among their tests was a programming test. I sent two e-mails explaining how I'm not a coder but how I'm not supposed to be one. And they passed me to the next stage.

Again, I think you proved the point I was trying to make with Y Combinator flawlessly. Not as an offence to you, though.

And yes, I understand that you weren't trying to bash me but to help me instead. Thanks for that.

Absolutely not :) I was just trying to get them to think more about what they're doing. Then I thought others might want to read the thing. It's that simple.

It isn't. And I'm not bitter or frustrated, either :)

Nope :)