YC will not help you with "growth hacking" or "marketing". I worked at a YC company (Magic YC'S15) while they were in YC before Demo Day. The one thing YC helped us with was to help build the best product for our users. Our service had gone viral and the focus was to focus on a specific KPI and grow it 10% week over week before demo day. YC doesn't help you with your first users, YC helps you know what to focus on for the best organic growth and building a product your users love.
My advice for you to get into YC is build a product that small group of users love. Then when you apply to YC you'll have traction. Also your team plays a big role, you'll need a technical cofounder & sales cofounder. Then the last thing is DOMAIN EXPERTISE. Someone on your team has to be an expert in their field. If you don't have these three things (traction, team and domain expertise) then the chance of you getting into YC are 0%.
Thanks. These are very useful comments. Thanks for taking time to respond. I agree there is lot of things we can improve in the product. The product has not gone viral so I am experimenting with few ideas. I am the technical founder and CEO. My co-founder handles product. Domain expertise is certainly lacking because we are not in college or high school. Had this idea been done by a college student, I agree this would have had better possibilities of making through.
My advice for you to get into YC is build a product that small group of users love. Then when you apply to YC you'll have traction. Also your team plays a big role, you'll need a technical cofounder & sales cofounder. Then the last thing is DOMAIN EXPERTISE. Someone on your team has to be an expert in their field. If you don't have these three things (traction, team and domain expertise) then the chance of you getting into YC are 0%.