Launching today
ReverseYC
See what startups built after YC said no
8 followers
See what startups built after YC said no
8 followers
ReverseYC is a public record of startups that applied to Y Combinator, were rejected, and kept building. Explore evidence-backed funding, revenue, and user milestones, or submit your own story. Rejections are self-reported. Not affiliated with YC.
Hey Product Hunt 👋
A rejection is a moment. It is not the outcome.
The startup world documents accelerator acceptances obsessively. But when a founder is rejected and keeps building, the story usually disappears, even when that company later raises meaningful funding, reaches millions of users, creates real revenue, or exits.
That is why we built ReverseYC.
It is a free, public collection of companies that:
applied to Y Combinator
were rejected
continued building
later produced evidence of funding, revenue, users, or another meaningful outcome
You can search the collection, filter companies by outcome or YC year, and open each entry to review the sources supporting its claims.
Founders can also submit their own company. We ask for the rejection context, the outcome, supporting source links, and an email confirmation before publication.
A few important clarifications:
This is not an attack on YC.
Rejections are self-reported.
Outcome claims are reviewed against submitted public sources.
ReverseYC is not affiliated with Y Combinator.
No accelerator or investor can predict every future outcome. We wanted to build a record of what founders did after one particular decision was over.
We would especially value feedback on three things:
What evidence should be required before an entry is published?
Which outcome types would make the collection more useful?
What could ReverseYC show that would help rejected founders keep building?
The most interesting part of a rejection story is what happened next.
-Artem
A rejection story is only half the story. Could you add a short follow-up timeline view that shows what happened after the rejection, like a 6-month or 12-month check-in where founders can log updates on revenue, team size, or funding? That would make the resilience arc much more visible and give aspiring founders a real sense of what comes next.
The story behind the rejection is usually the most interesting part. Adding a short "why we got rejected" field next to each company would make it way easier to learn from others' mistakes instead of just seeing the outcome.
It'd be really helpful to see a timeline view for each company showing rejection date, key milestones, and current status side by side. Hard to gauge how long it took them to bounce back otherwise.