We were also among the group that were invited for a interview - but received at the end a rejection e-mail. As graduating college seniors, we had banked a lot on pursuing our startup idea. I spurned a offer to work at a blue chip company that would offer full-rides and time off for grad school in CS; my partner for the YCombinator application decided to skip his final presentation in a major class taught by his thesis advisor (effectively garnering an incomplete mark on his transcript and less-than-favorable reception for his future grad school recommendations) for our presentation.

We certainly do not blame Paul Graham for our setbacks. Our motto had always been, "you win some, and you lose some." We won some when we received an invitation to Mountain View. We lost some when we received a rejection e-mail from PG afterwards. But then, we won some more, when we decided to take the free advice offered by PG (think bona fide corporate consulting) and go ahead with our startup idea anyways. Thanks to YCombinator, we have learned a lot from our trip to Cali and our first presentation to VC's, that we are going to take away and put to use,

- The Silicon Valley is just a place. Coming from a sleepy college town on the East Coast, we relished the idea of coming to the tech mecca where everything came together. But driving down San Jose/Pal Alto on $4/gallon reminded me of the suburban sprawl/commercial park/new development of Washington D.C/Boston/Philly; riding the $12/one way VTA light rail and BART and witnessing scores of IT workers getting off at Cisco Way reminded me of the scenes of my arriving for work at BigCo, back in Connecticut. But I was reminded that unlike those around me, I didn't have a ID badge, all I had was my idea and the thrill of following through or failing with my idea. Being Silicon Valley did not dazzle me with its "glitz," but my idea was still exciting to me.

- Doing startup's sucks, in the "conventional sense". As a college student, you can't help but compare yourself with your peers; I secretly maintained a secretive competitive streak with my friends, who will be going to med school/law school/wall street firms. While I have been outwardly conceding that they will be obscenely rich soon in comparison to my "poor" startup-wanabe self, I was hoping that getting accepted into YCombinator would put me ahead of my lame corporate-sellout friends. As an result, I poured a lot of time in writing the application and preparing our presentation. Now that we have been rejected, I relish of having the opportunity to once again, sit in my school's computer lab - late at night, coding away.

- How little rejections matter. We were heartbroken when we initially read the e-mail from PG on Saturday evening. But the next day when we woke up, I and my partner went our respective way's for more startup job interview's we had lined up for our trip to California. On our flight back home, we discussed how we could address on our own, the valid concerns that PG had brought up regarding our startup. When we got back to Connecticut, I fired off a e-mail to my mentor for Google Summer of Code (GSoC) that my plans for VC funding fell through, and that I will be able to work on my GSoC project full time during the summer (Any GSoC people here?). During the course of my writing this, my partner in crime caught up with me in the computer lab and showed me some of his plans for the back-end of next iteration for our startup website.

I've just realized how lucky I am, and how much the trip to Mountain View was worth all the time and troubles I went through.