You&#x27;re right, you can do all those without applying, but why not just hit submit anyways? It&#x27;s not going to hurt you and even if you do get that soul-crushing rejection, who cares? You&#x27;re going to face a lot more cruel rejections from angels and VCs so you might as well start building up your tolerance. And if you really can&#x27;t tolerate it then pursuing a startup isn&#x27;t for you, because it gets much more stressful as you go. This is a good explanation as to why they might reject your app: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ycombinator.com&#x2F;whynot&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ycombinator.com&#x2F;whynot&#x2F;</a><p>They eventually do <i>share</i> the ideas; just not in the beginning. Some companies announce themselves in the beginning and some don&#x27;t. Eventually we will hear about them when Demo Day comes around. This is a post listing the recent class: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.ycombinator.com&#x2F;congratulations-to-the-yc-summer-2015-class" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.ycombinator.com&#x2F;congratulations-to-the-yc-summer...</a><p>This is a compiled list of all the companies that have ever attended YC and their status (though it seems it hasn&#x27;t been updated yet): <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;yclist.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;yclist.com&#x2F;</a>