After getting rejected, I had a realization:
YC shares incredible content for entrepreneurs online, but finding specific answers is like digging for gold. What if we could make it instantly searchable instead? Like a "Perplexity for startup knowledge," you could retrieve YC partner advice on demand!
I pitched this idea to a few founder friends, and the reception felt electric. It quickly snowballed: why stop at YC? Let's create THE "Startup Bible," indexing insights from Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), First Round Capital, interviews from incredible founders like Immad Akhund, Eric Glyman, and Jeff Seibert, and much more.
I enlisted help from Georg von Manstein and Ella Plank to design a slick waitlist (with Vercel!) , build a database of YC content, bought the domain "https://startup.bible", and launched on Twitter.
Signups started. Then, the validation that lit a fire under us: SAM ALTMAN joined our waitlist. 🤯
That was our signal - extreme excitement! I booked last-minute flights to San Francisco for the YC AI event. We had the perfect audience - young students/early stage entrepreneurs looking for advice from legendary founders and researchers like Sam, Elon Musk, and Fei Fei Li.
Arriving in SF, I made some cardboard signs, complete with GPT-generated Paul Graham memes, and parked myself right at the event exit.
We got immediate attention - over 15 conversations in the first half hour. The security staff saw this attention and said, "Go inside. Talk to the organizers."
Slightly nervous, I gave my details to YC staff.
Staff: "Hmm, I see your YC AI School application was rejected."
I showed them my sign. "We came here for building the Startup Bible - giving cited AI search capabilities for all this incredible content YC puts out."
She chuckled, and after a brief huddle with her team, she moved me from the rejected to accepted list, and from the rejected list to official attendee - I got in! 🔥
Inside, we listened to panels from Michael T. (CEO/Cursor), Dylan Field (CEO/Figma), and Suhail D. (CEO/Mixpanel, Playground AI). And we also collected hundreds of signups from young, talented entrepreneurs into our community. We even met multiple YC partners, who loved the vision we shared.
I never expected to actually attend the event - I just wanted to collect some signups a fun, quirky project.
But as Sam Altman once said - you can just do things. You'll never know how it ends up!
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