Alex Circei says he applied to Y Combinator 13 times before his team was invited to join. In a May 10, 2021, TechCrunch essay, the Waydev co-founder described four lessons from that experience: make customer value clear, build a complementary founding team, seek specific feedback, and show evidence of progress. His account is useful as a founder’s retrospective, not a formula for admission or a statement of YC’s current criteria.
1. Make the business’s customer value the focus
Circei recounts publishing an analysis of Paul Graham’s essays on Hacker News and receiving a request from Graham to take it down. Circei says he later concluded the episode had not been held against him. His broader lesson was to put attention back on what the business can do for customers rather than on a founder’s personal visibility or perceived standing.
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For an application, make the customer problem and the product’s value easy to understand. The YC slogan “make something people want” appears in Circei’s essay; the practical point is to explain who wants the product, what it helps them do, and what evidence supports that claim.
2. Build a team with complementary skills
Circei says Waydev’s analytics product needed a technical co-founder and identifies his co-founder as Valentin Buzea. He viewed their different strengths as helpful both for execution and for demonstrating an ability to work together.
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That is one founder’s reasoning, not evidence that every applicant must have a co-founder. If applying as a team, explain why each person is suited to the work and how the skills fit together. If applying alone, make clear how the essential work gets done and where capabilities come from.
3. Ask people with relevant experience for specific feedback
Circei says he searched LinkedIn for YC-associated founders, asked them about their experiences, and requested feedback on application drafts. He and Buzea also took YC Startup School to align and learn. These are the practices he reports from his own application period; his essay does not establish the current availability or terms of those resources.
Rather than asking someone to judge an application in general, request feedback on a concrete question: Is the customer problem clear? Does the explanation show why customers want this product? Which claim needs stronger evidence? This makes advice easier to act on and helps reveal gaps before submitting.
4. Show progress and quality, not just a polished product
Circei says early signs of purchase intent and a polished product were not enough to make Waydev’s traction persuasive. He says the team needed to show growth in users, revenue, and retention, as well as quality signals such as notable customers, positive reviews, and press coverage.
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Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the 13 applications do—and do not—show
Circei says the product launched after eight applications, and that the team spent 20 months improving its metrics, product, and pitch before the thirteenth application succeeded. He also writes, “The more connections we made between applications, the stronger the next application became.” Those details show how he describes his own chronology; they do not establish that repeated applications cause acceptance, that 13 attempts are advisable, or that any one change secured admission.
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The practical use of the story is to treat each application as a chance to make the business clearer and its progress more demonstrable. If reapplying, identify what has materially changed since the last submission—such as customer evidence, growth, retention, or team capability—and explain it plainly, without treating one founder’s outcome as a guarantee.
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