logo
episode-header-image
Jan 2023
15m 50s

Investors Said No, Now What?

Y Combinator
About this episode

Step inside the Group Partner Lounge to hear Y Combinator Group Partners Harj Taggar, Michael Seibel and Brad Flora discuss how you should handle rejection from investors and why you should "believe the no, not the why."  

Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/

Up next
Yesterday
Jeff Dean: The 1% Rule for Building in AI
In 2001, Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat did the math and realized Google’s entire search index would fit in RAM — then shipped it in a few days, and search got fast. In 2013, another napkin calculation showed that three minutes of daily speech recognition per user would require do ... Show More
57m 6s
Jul 31
Alexandr Wang: “This is a Once-in-a-Civilization Opportunity”
Alexandr Wang's advice to his 18-year-old self: develop your own internal compass for how the future will unfold, and hold conviction in it against the noise. At Startup School 2026, the Scale AI (YC S16) founder — now leading Meta's Superintelligence Labs — talks with Garry Tan ... Show More
32m 9s
Jul 29
Blake Scholl: Breaking the Supersonic Ban
In 1969, we landed on the moon and flew Concorde. Half a century later, we could do neither.Blake Scholl founded Boom Supersonic (YC W16), the startup building America’s first supersonic airliner, to change that. At Startup School 2026, he shares how a cardboard mockup with Offic ... Show More
50m 1s
Recommended Episodes
Oct 2023
SaaStr 692: How To Perfectly Pitch Your Seed Stage Startup With Y Combinator's Managing Director Michael Seibel
<p>Discover the best ways for a seed-stage startup to pitch to investors and successfully fundraise from Y Combinator's Michael Seibel. Any founder you talk to likely remembers every investor who said no to them. Those founders hold a special kind of "not hatred," says Michael Se ... Show More
30m 19s
Aug 2020
#95 You Asked. Investors Answered. Now What?
In the spring, founders desperate for ideas about how to keep their companies afloat called in to get advice from our investors. Several months later, the economy is still far from recovering, so we called the founders back to see if the investors’ advice was working. Learn more ... Show More
32m 28s
Dec 2020
#100 When Investors Take the Hot Seat
This week, we've got a show like no other. Instead of startup founders asking for money to grow their business, we hear investors Jake Chapman and Howie Diamond pitch their new venture capital fund. And they learn right away that things on the other side of the table are a lot ha ... Show More
31m 23s
Aug 2024
One Word That Makes Investors Want to Hear More
Today on Entrepreneur Elevator Pitch, tech entrepreneurs share their visions for digital platforms built to fill the needs of businesses and customers alike. But while their two-sided marketplace pitches might sound polished, do these companies have that one thing that all invest ... Show More
26m 53s
Apr 2018
#29 Could This Be the Next Airbnb?
When Tye and Courtney Caldwell were having trouble renting space in their salon, they thought: why isn't there an app for this? So they created one, ShearShare. But can they convince investors that their skills will transfer from the barbershop to the boardroom? Today's investors ... Show More
38m 58s
Jan 2019
#55 A New Spin on VR
Tom Impallomeni is here to pitch Tribe XR, a VR app that teaches people to DJ. He’s got a vision for using virtual reality to teach creative skills — but the investors are skeptical. Can Tom convince them he’s putting the right spin on VR? Today's investors are Sarah Downey, Mich ... Show More
38m 54s
Nov 2020
Learn from every “no,” w/Walker & Company’s Tristan Walker
The best business ideas often seem laughable at first glance. So if you’re hearing a chorus of “no’s” – it may actually be a good sign. Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Airbnb – they all sounded crazy before they scaled spectacularly. So don’t be discouraged by rejection. Instead, lea ... Show More
29m 36s
May 2023
Hacking the minds of VCs
18 May 2023: What do venture capitalists look for in a startup?  Tom and Neil discuss how to get VC funding with Lachlan Hughes of Aditum Investment Management and Daniel dos Reis of Wamda Capital. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. 
41m 39s
Oct 2024
#148 ESAI
Can a college advisor disrupt the system from the inside? This is Julia Dixon's pitch for ESAI. Featuring investors Cyan Banister, Charles Hudson, Elizabeth Yin, Mac Conwell and Jesse Middleton. ... Watch Julia pitch her edtech startup on YouTube @thepitchshow Register for our vi ... Show More
30m 55s
Oct 2022
The next generation of investors
David Lebovitz and Jack Manley, Global Market Strategists, have a discussion around the next generation of investors and their financial mindset, identifying how their investment decisions are made and where institutional investors can find the most promising opportunities to rea ... Show More
21m 47s