Beer Secured YC Acceptance
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A story about how Instacart got accepted into Y Combinator through a creative demonstration of their product after initially being rejected.
"They were trying to apply late to YC and all the partners were like 'no, sorry, it's too late for this batch.' Gary Tan, who's now the current president of YC, told them they could submit a late application but it would be nearly impossible to get in.
They put together the application and got rejected the next day. But then the founder opened up his Instacart app and bought a 6-pack of beer, sent it to YC headquarters for Gary Tan. He told the driver to text him when it was done.
Gary Tan called him and said 'Hey what is this?' The founder replied 'This is the thing I was applying with - this is Instacart. I just went on my phone, ordered you a 6-pack of beer, and one of our delivery guys dropped it off.'
Gary then emailed the partners and they called back saying 'Hey, I can't believe we're doing this - we've never let anyone in this late, but if you're interested we'd like to have you.' For YC that means they got 7% of this company that ended up being worth $6 billion."
Shaan Puri
Host of MFM
Shaan Puri is the Chairman and Co-Founder of The Milk Road. He previously worked at Twitch as a Senior Director of Product, Mobile Gaming, and Emerging Markets. He also attended Duke University.