Turning Down Y Combinator

In 2009, we were introduced to Paul Graham and met with him in Palo Alto. During our conversation, he was impressed with our startup and invited us to join Y Combinator. We turned him down. We did not think that the VC model made sense for our startup at that time. Here are the emails we sent to each other as a follow-up to our meeting:

From: Paul Graham
Sent: Thursday, October 8, 2009 7:57 PM
To: John Melonakos
Subject: Re: AccelerEyes guys out in Bay Area through Friday

Nice to meet you too. Good luck, –pg

On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 11:44 AM, John Melonakos wrote:
> Hi Paul,
>
> It was a real treat to meet with you last week in Palo Alto – great
> conversation and nice to finally meet the man behind the essays!
>
> We are also flattered by your offer to join YC. As we mentioned, we
> feel a little too late to fit nicely into the YC framework. The main
> draw for us is how YC could provide a the funnel towards top
> VC-brands. If we end up getting serious about raising VC, we’ll keep
> you in mind and may reach out again down the road.
>
> We also took to heart the suggestion you gave in using Hacker News as
> a way to publicize cool demos, videos, etc that we produce. You’ll
> see posts from us in the future in that venue.
>
> Thanks again for the great meeting and we look forward to hopefully
> connecting with you more down the road.
>
> Best,
>
> John

It’s been 4.5 years since these emails. Sometimes I wonder about that decision. On the one hand, I see how many incredible companies and connections come from this elite startup incubator, and it would have been great to be linked to them. On the other hand, there is no way to tell how it would have turned out. Plenty of Y Combinator startups fail. In the Bay Area, we would have missed out on the great opportunities of Atlanta.

In any case, I’m thrilled where we are now and happy we are part of the Atlanta startup scene. There are many decisions (like this one) in the life of a startup upon which its future hinges. All you can do is make up your mind and move forward.

What are your thoughts on startup incubators?