Ok Patrick, here goes. I do not know your entire situation and i would like to start off by saying I am no "expert" in the field of UI or UX, but I can tell you that your site has some usability issues that you said you were going to address which is a good thing, but you need to do that sooner rather than later.
As someone who has been down this road (and yes I was turned down by Ycombinator tuesday too) I know that hardly anyone succeeds the first time they try something. The idea itself may succeed in the long run, but the implementation must change for it to work. You NEED to know that.
If you are dead set on your ideas working as is you will probably never have them actually work.
Keep in mind that everyone feels that their idea is wonderful and it will succeed, I believed that so much to the point that I took jobs selling cars on the weekends and working at geeksquad at night just to pay my bills while trying to make it. Ultimately I did so, but I would argue it was the tenacity I had that made my success a reality (I was also very lucky like most entrepreneurs). If you are not willing to do anything and everything it takes to succeed including eating cans of soup 1/2 can at a time in order to stretch meals out for several days and sleeping on your bedroom floor because you sold your bed on craigslist to pay your server bills chances are you are not the kind of entrepreneur anyone is interested in investing in.
Listen to some of the stories of the guys who made it but just barely. My recent favorite is Brian Chesky who is one of the founders of AirBnB ... truly a teriffic story where they believed in their idea enough to sell CEREAL to make a software company stay alive.
That my friend is wanting it and THAT is the kind of spirit and tenacity that the "deep pockets" in SV are looking for.
As someone who has been down this road (and yes I was turned down by Ycombinator tuesday too) I know that hardly anyone succeeds the first time they try something. The idea itself may succeed in the long run, but the implementation must change for it to work. You NEED to know that.
If you are dead set on your ideas working as is you will probably never have them actually work.
Keep in mind that everyone feels that their idea is wonderful and it will succeed, I believed that so much to the point that I took jobs selling cars on the weekends and working at geeksquad at night just to pay my bills while trying to make it. Ultimately I did so, but I would argue it was the tenacity I had that made my success a reality (I was also very lucky like most entrepreneurs). If you are not willing to do anything and everything it takes to succeed including eating cans of soup 1/2 can at a time in order to stretch meals out for several days and sleeping on your bedroom floor because you sold your bed on craigslist to pay your server bills chances are you are not the kind of entrepreneur anyone is interested in investing in.
Listen to some of the stories of the guys who made it but just barely. My recent favorite is Brian Chesky who is one of the founders of AirBnB ... truly a teriffic story where they believed in their idea enough to sell CEREAL to make a software company stay alive.
That my friend is wanting it and THAT is the kind of spirit and tenacity that the "deep pockets" in SV are looking for.