Our YC application was turned down, and that's a good thing

[swatkat7]

So, I get an email about an hour ago that our application for YC this year has been unsuccessful. It sure hurt but then again it was just the right motivation that I was looking for.

This is my reply to that email from YC:

"Thank you for writing in :) Although, it is a bummer that we didn’t get in, I look forward to emailing you about all the amazing growth we’ll soon have!

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for everything that you, Paul, Jessica and the entire YCombinator ecosystem is doing for entrepreneurs everywhere. It’s given me so much hope to look beyond the prognostications laid down by trade pundits and do something amazing that my users truly want.

As Marianne Williamson said, “most of us are in the gutter, but some of us are looking up at the stars.” We’re looking up and look forward to meeting you all someday.

Warmest regards,

Bala"

I've decided to pack my bags and move to the Bay Area (California) and focus on two things on the product that one of the YC Alums has been telling me all along:

1) Listen to my users more through active feedback. 2) Focus on one metric that I wish to grow for the product and do EVERYTHING to grow that on the product.

Honestly, we've been too distracted by people telling us that we could give our product away for enterprise (and we did) when we haven't perfected out product yet.

This has opened my eyes to what I've been doing wrong and I sincerely thank the world for it.

I hope to be able to share the product with all very soon.

[onion2k]

"...we haven't perfected out product yet."

You're aware that that won't ever happen, right? Focus on making it useful, then focus on selling it to people.

[swatkat7 → onion2k]

I just realised the irony in that sentence. You're right! What I meant was, we haven't really figured out a product for consumers, let alone the enterprise, for us to be able to go for it. Having said that, what we're now doing is that we have created a beta users group on Facebook and have added quite a bit of people to it (and still are...). What we will be doing is get feedback from them and mould the product exactly how these users sound off there.

Matt Schlicht (Hipset / Tracks.by, YC S'12) gave me the advice to do it and we're just doing that. Working now to roll it out to these users first and listen intently and give them exactly that.

[vinayp10]

What was your startup?

[swatkat7 → vinayp10]

Firstly, is* :-)

And, it's http://tapbeyond.com, a personalisation platform that lets people discover content and conversations around what interest them.

[karlhwhite]

I'd be a little sad if that were the case. Not because I desperately like PHP (I don't), but it has its uses (and it's pretty prolific), and sometimes that best tool for the job is whatever tool does the job.

[swatkat7 → karlhwhite]

^^ What he said! +1

[swatkat7]

our