We, Body Boss (http://bodybossfitness.com) didn't even have a product last time year, and we thought just having a good idea was enough for acceptance. In the past year, we've boostrapped like crazy, built a product, launched and acquired plenty of customers to validate our idea.
YC rejection for the 2nd year in a row has done little to dampen our spirits and ambition. Here's to another rejection that motivates us to succeed!
Congrats on your success--the site looks great! It loads pretty slowly for me though even with a decent connection. I'm in Australia, so that could be a factor, but I see a few quick optimizations you could do.
1 - Some of your images are huge. The ipad workouts image alone is 300kb, which is way too big. Of course you want them to be good quality, but you should be able to cut a lot of weight without any noticeable effect. The Fireworks Export Wizard is a good tool for this.
2 - Some of your images are unnecessarily broken up into lots
of separate img tags. The main landing page image with the helmets and devices has over 6 tags. You should combine images in order to have as few img tags as possible. It will reduce http requests and also give the browser less layout work to do.
3 - On a similar note, you have a bunch of small images like the player portraits that you could group into a spritesheet to further reduce requests.
4 - It doesn't seem like you're using a CDN? Something like Cloudfront or Cloudflare is quick to setup and will improve download time for your images drastically, especially for people who are far away from your server like me.
5 - You should put your javascript at the bottom of the body instead of in the head. You're not executing anything until the dom is loaded anyway, and putting at the bottom will allow the page to render before the js is downloaded and parsed, improving perceived load time. Use 'display: none' to initially hide anything that depends on the js to look right.
Just wanted to say that I'm nowhere near your target market but the landing page looks excellent, incredibly polished for less than a year's work. Best of luck to you!
But one thing. Your target market is "coaches and players"
Yet your "about" page is targeted toward either a) getting funded or b) people who are into tech, read HN, etc.
That's a problem. You start of with "Andrew Reifman" who is a "pixel perfectionist". This has nothing to do with anything that your target market (say the coach at my local high school team) would even remotely care about.
The one person "Darren Pottinger" who has some street cred is listed as number two.
I think Darren should be the prominent person on that "about" page with the rest of the team deprecated (smaller type) or even placed on a separate page. Perhaps get some "advisors" that are coaches, players or other users to fill space on that page as well. Give it some meat.
That page to me says "we are looking to build a company" not "we have the expertise to help players and coaches with our product".
If someone wants to invest - your team will matter. But it shouldn't be presented in a way that detracts from the product or service you are offering.
I agree, impressive landing page. Every application round I see someone as polished as this, and then realize to not take rejection to heart. Rejections, even at YC, will have their fair share of false positives.
YC rejection for the 2nd year in a row has done little to dampen our spirits and ambition. Here's to another rejection that motivates us to succeed!
- Proud Rejectee