Well, I was looking for a co-founder, but I did not find the right fit. Nowadays it does not make sense to give out 50% of the company to a random guy, that's why I hired a business developer and offered an option.

Thanks for the feedback. I would love to learn more about your product. Lmk if you want to meet for a coffee in SF downtown.

Yeah, I live & work in San Francisco at Rackspace co-working space on Folsom. It's a great place to be. Definitely recommend to everyone.

Always glad to share about myself & Appodeal.

I've been working on it for almost a year now.

There is a team of 12 super strong developers in Russia & Ukraine, that have been working with me for 4 years already. Very loyal. I myself have a strong technical background and remote teams management experience.

Business & sales team consists of me, my operating director and a first sales guy we are going to hire next week and we are all here in SF. So we have a pretty strong tech team (because we don't compete for developers with Google/Facebook). And we have business presence in SF as well.

Traction is pretty good too. We've launched in January and already have $200K monthly revenues and some net revenues as well. Each day we receive 15-25 new sign ups and retention is close to 100%. We are about to launch aggressive marketing this month.

Just the standard: You created a startup application. You submitted your application.

with no additional information (just to clarify) or nothing at all? ?

Standard. Nothing changed.

Thanks!

Well, I believe it is worth it to stop talking to customers and coding for a moment and try to analyze, why the heck you did not get approved to YC.

I'm not upset, actually it's a good thing that I don't have to give out 7% of my company for $15k. But nevertheless, worth it to analyze.

it's no longer 15k for 7%, isn't it? it's 120k

no sane developer would trade his idea he spent several months working on for just 15k, even if it's YC. That's not how investor's market is right now.

I was not aware of that :)

sorry, I don't think it makes you feel any better :)

but hey, make a first million, have a successful exit - next time apply with a billion dollars idea - they'll take you seriously!!

Frankly speaking, this is my second rejection to YC. In 2013 we applied as a team of 4 with a secure mobile instant messenger.

We did get an invitation to the interview, however did not pass it. I guess last time we did not convince them, the our team could execute. Official response from Paul, however, stated, that we lacked a well-done marketing plan.

You lacked a marketing plan or you lacked a road to market? Do you remember how it was phrased? (Just curious)

Rejected with http://www.appodeal.com/ (squeeze more revenues from mobile ad networks)

Have been working on it for almost a year now and really close to break even. Probably, because I am the only founder.

Here's my video that I submitted to YC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdR_2AODciE&feature=youtu.be

Might be useful for someone in the future.

If you're "close to break even" that implies you're getting revenue somewhere. But your site says your product is free. So where is the money coming from?

We don't charge publishers.

Appodeal makes money by selling to direct advertisers in bulk at a higher rate. Basically we charge advertisers, rather than publishers.

Hey i really like what your working on, lets chat.

Thank you, really glad to hear that. Inboxed.

Interesting project. Could we chat? My email is on my profile page.

Thank you. Just sent you an e-mail. Would love to chat.

True. Hard to object. Just to double check, are you from YC?

Awesome site! Really really well done.

Apparently, not well enough, haha. Anyway, it might be a good thing after all.

Well, it took like 3 months to make it look like this. First version was much worse. Luckily we had enough time to polish it up before public launch.

Hey. This is what we've managed to build in 2 months.

It's integrated with Coinbase.com and european payment system OkPay. It basically allows two things: accept Bitcoin payments on web-site or over API or to buy/sell Bitcoins and keep it on our wallet. It is very similar to Coinbase, except for the audience, which is european primarily.There are two developers in a team, ceo and me, being a sponsor. We've been working on it for 2 months. Monthly budget is $6000.We need a serious partner here, who could mentor us, help financially and plan milestones and overall strategy. We set up an account with OkPay as an offshore company and end up with .io ___domain to avoid potential legal difficulties.

Let me know what you think about it.

What potential legal difficulties does the .io ___domain allow you to avoid?

Good point. I already saved a copy of system logs.

IANAL but I'd suggest you go further and stop using your computer as soon as possible. Use linux to DD the drive onto a secondary backup drive as a bit for bit archive, put the existing drive in the possession of a third party and then start from scratch. Each time you use the computer you're damaging your credibility in a potential lawsuit.

Hm. What's wrong with FileVault?

I knew that there could be some issues with my laptop after service it Apple, they informed me about it. But I thought to myself, come on, it's just a minor cooler issue, they won't even need to login to fix it. How could they possible break anything.

FileValult problems: http://mjtsai.com/blog/2012/08/07/filevault-2s-apple-id-back...

AFAIK they don't login to fix hardware issues -- they netboot diagnostics software but on multiple occasions I was informed by people that Apple had "made a backup of their system" before a reinstall. What that entails and what the retention policy is, I do not know but I suspect unless they're doing a three-pass erase on their temporary storage devices afterwards (which is unlikely) then your data is easy pickings...

My MBP, which is incidentally knackered, is still FileVault encrypted. It will stop a casual theif getting in but not much more

So if I understand what you're saying here, you think that a thief working at the Apple store might have either themselves had access to your Apple ID, or was colluding with someone inside of Apple at Cupertino to get access to your Apple ID, so that they could steal $8500 from you?

Am I missing something about the story here or is that an accurate summary?

So turn off letting your Apple ID unlock your FV volumes. A FV drive, that's locked cannot be unlocked just by having local access.

You authorize Apple to make a backup of your drive if yu're having work done that may cause data loss.

There is an issue with user switching and firewire/DMA that allows remote access as well as cold boot attacks but these are out of reach of most people.

firewire / thunderbolt DMA access was fixed many years ago: if you enabled a firmware password, those buses have DMA disabled.

Are you saying that if I have a firmware password on my MBA that my internal SSD is inaccessible via Thunderbolt externally (until I've entered my password)?

No, but your TB device wouldn't have read access to physical memory (where keys would be)

No - but it means that a device can't read your FileVault keys out of memory so all they can read is the encrypted volume.

They generally do ask for a login on your system when you give them the machine for service. You don't need to provide it.

I never suspected it could happen at Apple. And it's not about $10, you know. It's $8500! I was counting on that money.

Have you thought about trying to track the person down using their wallet address? The blockchain is only as anonymous as someone is careful.

They are using mixer service. I am unable to track them. https://blockchain.info/tree/111322425

inform the FBI that you have reason to believe an apple employee at that ___location is laundering money. And possibly using it to buy drugs.

I filed a report on IC3.gov website.