YC said no
So yeah, the largest startup accelerator in the world turned down our application to join the W22 batch. Let’s backtrack a little, shall we?
For me and my partners at Zilla, it’s been a dream to be a part of YC especially because I worked at a YC backed startup for a while and I have folks in my circle who got backed by YC, some of which invested in Zilla. I have seen the impact YC has had on startups in the African tech ecosystem and I thought it would be great to have that stamp of validation that will make the hustle easier.
We (usezilla.com) started our application to be a part of YC’s 2022 winter batch and put so much work into our application. It had only been a couple of months since we started building but we had very strong clarity of what we were building and also had made very good progress. We submitted our application on the 31st of August, 2021 after we had refined it severally and asked other YC-backed founders and mentors to help review it as well. We were sure we would get invited for an interview. And on Friday, Oct. 29th, 2021, we got an email that YC would love to have a chat with us.
I woke up that morning to the email from YC. I was super excited and immediately told the rest of the team and a couple of our investors. We had about 5 days to get set. And boy, we put everything aside and prepared the hell for the interview. Altogether, we had about 10 mock interview sessions with several founders across the world. Because I am the CEO at Zilla, I was gonna do most of the talking during the interview- boy! that was some pressure but I did alright-
The day for the interview came and hours turned into minutes and minutes turned into seconds and I was pumped and ready to kill it. The interview was delayed for over 20 mins and we didn’t get any communication to that effect. We were slightly worried and grew a little tense at that point.
Finally, they join the call and Michael Sibel was our interviewer- haha 😂
We had a great 10 mins and we mostly talked about merchant segmentation for Zilla, competitive landscape, and debt requirements for the business. We thought we did good with most of the questions- we honestly gave ourselves a 75% after the interview.
At 2 am of the following day, we got an email from YC- they won’t be backing us in this batch. I was so disappointed. I didn’t expect that at all. I really thought we had this one.
Hours later, I replied to the email and clarified further that we had actually made a tremendous effort in securing debt capital- stressing that we have signed commitments up to $1 million.
I added this tweet of Michael from 2019 to the email to stress that bro, time is of the essence and we need this luck in our favor right now. The fact is whether we get into YC or not, we will do amazing at Zilla. I am confident, my partners are confident, the team is confident, our current investors are confident. However, being in YC now makes so many things easier for us and gives us the extra validation we need as a company.
I sent out the email and waited for Micheal’s reply throughout the day. I was literally restless and I was just pacing all around the house. And then his reply came in very early in the morning on the 4th of November-
Phewww- I came to the conclusion that we weren’t gonna join this batch. It was heartbreaking but then, we move.
My team has been the best. I am lucky to have folks who believe absolutely in the success of the business and in our ability to win while giving it their all. And we all bounced back to the building and growing the business.
We are only just getting started and we are set to DO MORE!
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P.S. Thanks for reading this far! If you found value in this, I’d really appreciate it if you recommend this post (by clicking the clap button severally) so other people can see it!.
Also, follow Zilla on all social platforms- the handle is @usezilla. Join our waitlist and we will tell you when we launch to the public.- www.usezilla.com
