My experience at a YC startup
I don't know the person or the YC company in question, and I realize I'm nitpicking, but these three things stuck out at me.<p><i>> I wanted to have a significant impact so I was constantly asking the founders to work on the long-term vision and culture for the company.</i><p>Anybody could waste months and months working on the long-term vision and culture. In a startup, that's next to useless as <i>everyone</i> should contribute to the long term vision. It's the day-to-day that's important.<p><i>> I also told them that VCs invested in talent and not the idea.</i><p>VCs invest in traction. "I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me."<p><i>> The leadership was struggling with the vision of the company. It was pulled in many directions - sometimes ad-hoc based on customer feedback or angel advice.</i><p>That's what an early startup is -- figuring out product/market fit, largely based on ad-hoc decision making like this. Picking a vision that just works is incredibly rare.<p>I know dozens of YC founders and in my experience they're really good at what they do, but you can't expect to stumble on Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, or Evan Williams by joining a random YC company. There are probably less then a dozen people of this quality in the entire world, and YC invests in ~60 companies per batch for god's sakes!<p>EDIT. And also:<p><i>> The culture was bad. Engineers were constantly told what to do.</i><p>Engineers <i>should</i> be told what to do (but hopefully not how to do it). Being good at engineering doesn't in any way qualify you for being good at managing product.<p>EDIT2:<p><i>> Then another round of raising Series A started. The “nos" started piling up. Our last hope said “no" 2 weeks back.</i><p>Of course the nos started piling up. Having a few rejections is nothing, we went through ~60 rejections before raising the first round for our company.<p>Excellence in the absence of pressure wins you no accolades. How you act when the house is burning down is what ultimately defines who you are. It's cool if the guy wanted to leave because this kind of pressure isn't for everyone (and that's fine), but blaming two measly rejections on others is off-putting. It's easy to blame failure on others, much harder to take responsibility for it yourself and help turn a dire situation into a victory.