Being rejected from YC is not necessarily the end of the world. I speak from experience, when my company first started out, we tried to get into YC S11, got the interview, but did not make it. We continued along bootstrapped for a while, and ended up raising a couple millions in Series A. We haven't had to touch the money, we're profitable and have ~30 people now.
Point is, PG is one of the smartest guys around; but don't be discouraged if he thinks your idea is terrible, he's not always right.
Did you use a different HN id when you applied? I was curious which group you were part of, but there has never been an application including this HN id.
I don't think my HN id was mentioned in the application, but the co-founders were `progolferyo` and `marialegre`.
I'd be super curious what you think of us now, actually. We struggled for a bit to find the right approach but I think we've come a long long way; even though we still have a long way to go.
> don't be discouraged if he thinks your idea is terrible, he's not always right
I made it to interviews last year, thought we did OK on the interviews but were ultimately rejected. Looking back, it was definitely the right choice to reject our idea. Holy cow was it bad.
One of my teammates went on to get accepted for a fantastic idea in the following round, though. I since joined http://counsyl.com and am way happier working here than if I was still working on the terrible idea we had (p.s. we're hiring http://is.gd/counsyl_engineering).
Point is, PG is one of the smartest guys around; but don't be discouraged if he thinks your idea is terrible, he's not always right.