# getting into YC F25: after the fact
**作者**: wen
**日期**: 2026-08-23T07:51:06.000Z
**来源**: [https://x.com/wen_rahme/status/2091433032062317018](https://x.com/wen_rahme/status/2091433032062317018)
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One year ago today, [@tobiasherber_](https://x.com/@tobiasherber_) and I got into [@ycombinator](https://x.com/@ycombinator).
Thirty minutes before the call, I was kicked out of ETH Zurich. Twenty minutes later, I was unplugging the speakers at a Starbucks because the music was too loud. Fortunately, YC accepted us, so I am permitted to call what happened in between resourcefulness.
Two days earlier, I had about five hundred dollars in my bank account, no apartment secured in Switzerland, and one viewing booked after two months of desperately searching on Facebook Marketplace.
I was supposed to begin a master’s degree at EPFL in Lausanne.
This was not an entirely novel financial situation. For most of university, I had been doing a triple major in computer science, mathematics, and philosophy while working on startups and spending parts of my summers doing research. I was interested in too many things, unwilling to give most of them up, and also had the more prosaic problem of needing to earn roughly twelve thousand US dollars every semester to pay for the next one.
It is difficult to sustain a prolonged inquiry into the nature of freedom when tuition is due.
So I built things, usually with my co-founder Tobias.
We met when we were roughly fourteen at technical high school in Austria and started working on projects together soon afterward. Over the next ten years, the projects have become increasingly less innocent. Small pieces of software became products, products acquired users, users acquired expectations, and eventually expectations acquired contracts and lawyers. The mechanism has remained suspiciously stable: one of us notices something stupid, tells the other we could probably build it better, and some nontrivial portion of the following year disappears.
Metorial emerged from one of these episodes.
We first applied to YC while I was finishing university in Abu Dhabi. My family flew over for graduation, the first time in four years that they had all visited me there, and they were staying for four days. Naturally, YC scheduled our interview during those four days.
Tobias and I took it. We were rejected. I wrote more about that [here](https://x.com/wen_rahme/status/2089388913500516779).
Had YC accepted us, I suspect I would now remember the same choice as evidence of focus. Because they rejected us, it mostly meant that I had missed celebrating graduation with my family.
Success over failure has this useful property: it improves the adjectives without changing the actions. What looks reckless before the outcome becomes conviction afterward. Obsession becomes focus. Social neglect becomes sacrifice. A sequence of choices that would concern your relatives acquires, once sufficiently rewarded, the dignity of a founder biography.
We spent one day believing YC had misunderstood us. Then we considered the less flattering possibility that if intelligent people failed to understand why the company mattered, explaining it badly was actually our fault. So we kept building.
A few months later, I graduated from NYU and moved to Lausanne to begin the degree. Or, more precisely, I arrived in Lausanne with five hundred dollars, no apartment, and a strong theoretical commitment to living in Lausanne.
For two months I had been trying to find housing through Facebook Marketplace. This provided a surprisingly rigorous introduction to practical epistemology. All the landlords were apparently abroad, the apartments could not be viewed over video, and almost everyone was nevertheless confident that a bank transfer would resolve the remaining uncertainty.
I avoided being scammed, mostly, and eventually booked exactly one in-person viewing, which was good enough for me to justify taking the trip. I booked a hostel in the olympic village for 3 days and then found the cheapest train route. Just before I arrived, still in the train, YC invited Tobias and me to interview again.
The obvious solution was to book a quiet hotel room. I could not afford one. Going back to Austria also made little sense because, if YC rejected us again, I still needed to return to Lausanne, find an apartment, and begin the degree. Now with even less money.
Paul Graham has written that investors should look for founders who are formidable. There is a romantic interpretation of formidability in which founders bend reality around themselves. There is also a cheaper reality in which you have five hundred dollars and cannot afford the obvious solution. Airbnb, to be fair, built an entire company around this discovery.
My uncle lived in a small village close to Lyon, and a train ticket to France was cheaper than a hotel room in Switzerland. So I went to France.
My uncle and I do not quite share a language. He speaks Bosnian, French, and no English; I speak enough Bosnian to communicate the general architecture of an idea while leaving its finer details to charity. Shortly before the interview (5 minutes, to be precise), he returned unexpectedly from his shift, and I had to explain why Tobias and several Americans were about to appear on my laptop, why this mattered enormously, and why I needed him to temporarily leave part of his own apartment.
He understood enough, went upstairs, and Tobias and I did the interview. Afterward, I stayed awake until around 3 a.m. refreshing my inbox. This had no causal influence on YC’s decision, which I understood perfectly well. So I slept. At six the next morning, I woke up to: “Let’s do a follow-up call today.”
This was not, strictly speaking, an answer to the question I had been asking. It could have meant an acceptance. It could have meant another interview. It could have meant YC had discovered a more intimate way of telling us no.
I also needed to get back to Austria for my brother’s birthday. I had missed the previous four because of university, and four seemed sufficient. Ambitious people are unusually good at describing absence as temporary; the difficulty is that other people continue aging while your justification is in progress. This had already cost me a lot in my personal relationships.
My uncle returned from his night shift around 6:30 a.m. and drove me to the station. I had about twenty minutes to work out how to get from Lyon to somewhere in Zurich with reliable internet, take a call whose purpose I did not know, and continue to Austria before my brother’s birthday became, once again, the day after my brother’s birthday.
I chose ETH Zurich because universities have Wi-Fi and Eduroam meant my old NYU credentials should still work. For a while, the plan did too. Then, thirty minutes before the call, I was told to leave because the building was being cleared for exams. So I left, tried a few nearby places, and eventually found a Starbucks with reliable internet and speakers loud enough to make the call unusable, so I unplugged them.
I put my suitcase down, opened my laptop, and joined Tobias. Then YC told us we were in.
I had imagined the moment often enough that I expected it to feel more physically consequential. But the facts had barely changed. A few hours earlier I had been broke, effectively homeless in Switzerland, and unsure whether I was beginning graduate school. Now I was broke, effectively homeless in Switzerland, and fairly sure I would soon make myself homeless somewhere else, probably San Francisco.
This was progress.
I plugged the speakers back in and went to catch my train.
By the time I reached Austria it was close to midnight.
The party had almost ended. There was still cake.
Near the end of YC, I told one of the partners this story. By then, I could already hear myself improving it. The empty bank account became hunger. The improvised travel became resourcefulness. Missing family occasions became sacrifice. The whole mess was acquiring the clean causal structure that successful stories tend to receive after the fact.
I was probably preparing to extract some respectable lesson from it when the partner laughed and said, more or less: “Yeah. That’s the fun of it.”
It was annoyingly unserious, and probably correct.
Had YC rejected us, I would have taken the same trains, slept the same three hours, unplugged the same speakers, and arrived at the same birthday. Only the adjectives would have changed.
Success does not prove that your decisions were sensible. It merely makes people more generous when deciding what to call them.
## 相关链接
- [wen](https://x.com/wen_rahme)
- [@wen_rahme](https://x.com/wen_rahme)
- [14K](https://x.com/wen_rahme/status/2091433032062317018/analytics)
- [@tobiasherber_](https://x.com/@tobiasherber_)
- [@ycombinator](https://x.com/@ycombinator)
- [here](https://x.com/wen_rahme/status/2089388913500516779)
- [Upgrade to Premium](https://x.com/i/premium_sign_up)
- [3:51 PM · Aug 23, 2026](https://x.com/wen_rahme/status/2091433032062317018)
- [14.9K Views](https://x.com/wen_rahme/status/2091433032062317018/analytics)
- [View quotes](https://x.com/wen_rahme/status/2091433032062317018/quotes)
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*导出时间: 2026/8/24 14:35:13*
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## 中文翻译
# 进入 YC F25 的事后回顾
**作者**: wen
**日期**: 2026-08-23T07:51:06.000Z
**来源**: [https://x.com/wen_rahme/status/2091433032062317018](https://x.com/wen_rahme/status/2091433032062317018)
---
一年前的今天，[@tobiasherber_](https://x.com/@tobiasherber_) 和我被 [@ycombinator](https://x.com/@ycombinator) 录取了。
通话前三十分钟，我被赶出了苏黎世联邦理工学院。二十分钟后，我在一家星巴克拔掉了音响的插头，因为音乐太吵了。幸运的是，YC 录取了我们，所以我有理由把中间发生的事称为“随机应变”。
两天前，我银行账户里只有大约五百美元，在瑞士没有落实住处，经过两个月拼命在 Facebook Marketplace 上找房之后，只订到了一次看房。
我本该去洛桑的 EPFL 攻读硕士学位。
这并不是一个全新的财务状况。大学的大部分时间里，我一直在修计算机科学、数学和哲学的三学位，同时在创业，暑假还花部分时间做研究。我对太多东西感兴趣，不愿意放弃其中大部分，同时还面临一个更现实的问题：每学期需要挣大约一万二千美元来支付下一学期的学费。
当学费到期时，很难维持对“自由的本质”的长期探究。
所以我一直在做东西，通常是和我的联合创始人 Tobias 一起。
我们大约十四岁时在奥地利的技术高中相识，之后不久就开始一起做项目。在接下来的十年里，这些项目变得越来越不那么“单纯”。小型软件变成了产品，产品获得了用户，用户产生了期望，最终期望带来了合同和律师。但其中的机制却出奇地稳定：我们中的一个注意到某个很蠢的东西，告诉另一个“我们大概能做得更好”，然后接下来一年的相当一部分时间就消失了。
Metorial 就诞生于这样一次经历。
我们第一次申请 YC 是当我在阿布扎比完成大学学业的时候。我家人飞过来参加毕业典礼，这是四年来他们第一次全部来看我，他们只待四天。理所当然地，YC 把我们的面试安排在了这四天里。
Tobias 和我接受了这个安排。我们被拒了。我在[这里](https://x.com/wen_rahme/status/2089388913500516779)写了更多关于那次经历的内容。
如果当时 YC 录取了我们，我怀疑我现在会把同样的选择记作“专注”的证明。但因为被拒了，它主要意味着我错过了和家人一起庆祝毕业。
成功相对于失败有一个有用的属性：它改善了形容词，却没有改变行为。在结果出来之前看起来鲁莽的事，之后就成了信念。偏执变成了专注。忽视社交变成了牺牲。一连串会让亲戚担忧的选择，一旦获得了足够的回报，就拥有了创始人传记的尊严。
我们花了一天时间相信是 YC 误解了我们。然后我们考虑了一个不那么讨人喜欢的可能性：如果聪明人无法理解这家公司为什么重要，那么把它讲得不好实际上是我们的错。所以我们继续做产品。
几个月后，我从纽约大学毕业，搬到洛桑开始读学位。或者，更准确地说，我带着五百美元、没有住处，以及对“生活在洛桑”的坚定理论承诺，来到了洛桑。
此前两个月我一直在通过 Facebook Marketplace 找房。这提供了一次出奇严谨的实践认识论入门课程。所有的房东显然都在国外，公寓无法通过视频看房，但几乎每个人都确信一笔银行转账能解决剩下的不确定性。
我大体上避免了被骗，最终订到了唯一一次实地看房，这足以让我有理由跑这一趟。我在奥运村订了三天的青旅，然后找到了最便宜的火车路线。就在我快到的时候，还在火车上，YC 邀请 Tobias 和我再面试一次。
显而易见的解决办法是订一间安静的酒店房间。我付不起。回奥地利也没什么意义，因为如果 YC 再次拒绝我们，我还是得回到洛桑，找房子，开始学业。而且钱更少了。
Paul Graham 曾写道，投资者应该寻找令人敬畏的创始人。关于这种“令人敬畏”有一种浪漫的解读：创始人让现实围绕自己弯曲。但也有一个更廉价的现实：你只有五百美元，付不起显而易见的解决方案。公平地说，Airbnb 就是围绕这一发现建立了整家公司。
我叔叔住在里昂附近的一个小村庄，而去法国的火车票比瑞士的酒店房间便宜。所以我去了法国。
我和叔叔没有共同的语言。他说波斯尼亚语、法语，不会英语；我会的波斯尼亚语足以传达一个想法的大致框架，至于细节就只能靠对方的善意了。面试前不久（准确说是五分钟前），他突然下班回来了，我不得不解释为什么 Tobias 和几个美国人即将出现在我的笔记本电脑上，为什么这件事至关重要，以及为什么我需要他暂时离开他自己公寓的一部分。
他大致听懂了，上了楼，Tobias 和我完成了面试。之后，我一直醒到凌晨三点左右，不停刷新收件箱。这对 YC 的决定没有任何因果影响，这一点我心知肚明。于是我睡了。第二天早上六点，我醒来看到：“我们今天做一个后续通话吧。”
严格来说，这并不是对我一直在问的问题的回答。它可能意味着录取，可能意味着又一次面试，也可能意味着 YC 发现了一种更委婉地拒绝我们的方式。
我还得赶回奥地利参加弟弟的生日。因为上大学，我已经错过了之前四次，四次似乎已经足够了。雄心勃勃的人特别擅长把缺席描述为暂时的；困难在于，当你的理由还在酝酿中时，其他人却在继续变老。这已经让我在个人关系中付出了很大代价。
我叔叔大约早上六点半下了夜班，开车送我去车站。我大约有二十分钟的时间来搞定：如何从里昂赶到苏黎世某个有可靠网络的地方，接一个目的不明的电话，然后在我弟弟的生日再一次变成“我弟弟生日之后的那天”之前赶到奥地利。
我选择了苏黎世联邦理工学院，因为大学有 Wi-Fi，而 Eduroam 意味着我旧的纽约大学账号应该还能用。有一段时间，这个计划也确实行得通。然后，在通话前三十分钟，我被要求离开，因为大楼要为考试清场。于是我走了出去，试了几个附近的地方，最终找到了一家星巴克，网络可靠，但音响吵得没法通话，所以我拔掉了它们的插头。
我放下行李箱，打开笔记本电脑，和 Tobias 一起加入了通话。然后 YC 告诉我们，我们进去了。
我无数次想象过那个时刻，以至于我以为它会有更强烈的切身感受。但事实几乎没有改变。几个小时前，我破产了，在瑞士实际上无家可归，不确定是否要开始研究生学业。现在我破产了，在瑞士实际上无家可归，而且相当确定自己很快会在别的地方——大概是旧金山——让自己无家可归。
这算是进步。
我把音响的插头插回去，赶火车去了。
等我到达奥地利时已近午夜。
派对几乎结束了。蛋糕还在。
在 YC 快结束时，我把这个故事讲给一位合伙人听。那时，我已经能听到自己在润色它。空空的银行账户变成了渴望。临时起意的旅行变成了随机应变。错过家庭聚会变成了牺牲。整个一团糟的事情正在获得成功故事往往在事后才会拥有的干净的因果结构。
我可能正准备从中提炼出某个体面的教训，那位合伙人笑了，大致说道：“是啊，这就是其中的乐趣。”
这句话出奇地不严肃，却可能是正确的。
如果 YC 拒绝了我们，我会坐同样的火车，睡同样的三个小时，拔掉同样的音响插头，赶上同样的生日。只有形容词会改变。
成功并不能证明你的决定是明智的。它只是让人们在对这些决定命名时更加慷慨。
## 相关链接
- [wen](https://x.com/wen_rahme)
- [@wen_rahme](https://x.com/wen_rahme)
- [14K](https://x.com/wen_rahme/status/2091433032062317018/analytics)
- [@tobiasherber_](https://x.com/@tobiasherber_)
- [@ycombinator](https://x.com/@ycombinator)
- [here](https://x.com/wen_rahme/status/2089388913500516779)
- [Upgrade to Premium](https://x.com/i/premium_sign_up)
- [3:51 PM · Aug 23, 2026](https://x.com/wen_rahme/status/2091433032062317018)
- [14.9K Views](https://x.com/wen_rahme/status/2091433032062317018/analytics)
- [View quotes](https://x.com/wen_rahme/status/2091433032062317018/quotes)
---
*导出时间: 2026/8/24 14:35:13* 
