"A solution is a something. But a something isn’t always a solution."
I like this quote a lot: you failed to get into YC but I think you passed on this. You can build a better mouse trap, but its only helpful in places where there are mice.
Take it as a learning experiance, either adjust what you are doing or now you can approach your next idea with improved perspective and experiance. From what I recall the acceptance rate of companies offered an interview is still only about 25%. I expect there are a few viable companies that don't make it in each batch.
(From someone who interviewed in S12, was rejected, and took considerably longer that you to reach similar conclusions to those you have).
Some unsolicited thoughts:
I do use MATLAB a fair bit in my work (PhD student now). I like it quite a bit and to be honest I haven't really had any big pain points with it, at least compared to some other packages that cost even more than MATLAB does (but probably have fewer users).
I think you'll have to find a new swing on what matlab does. Academics get discounted licenses and seem to be fine to pay for them, and I'm not sure if a $2K license is a big deal for corporate users. Without those two groups, I'm not sure how many people are left. Likewise, I don't think a service to learn how to use MATLAB would have that big of market.
Maybe an interesting and disruptive swing would be to enable the power of matlab-functionality to be abstracted to allow less sophisticated users to use it? Wolfram Alpha is in some ways this, but it could be tied into other services better.
I like this quote a lot: you failed to get into YC but I think you passed on this. You can build a better mouse trap, but its only helpful in places where there are mice.
Take it as a learning experiance, either adjust what you are doing or now you can approach your next idea with improved perspective and experiance. From what I recall the acceptance rate of companies offered an interview is still only about 25%. I expect there are a few viable companies that don't make it in each batch.
(From someone who interviewed in S12, was rejected, and took considerably longer that you to reach similar conclusions to those you have).
Some unsolicited thoughts:
I do use MATLAB a fair bit in my work (PhD student now). I like it quite a bit and to be honest I haven't really had any big pain points with it, at least compared to some other packages that cost even more than MATLAB does (but probably have fewer users).
I think you'll have to find a new swing on what matlab does. Academics get discounted licenses and seem to be fine to pay for them, and I'm not sure if a $2K license is a big deal for corporate users. Without those two groups, I'm not sure how many people are left. Likewise, I don't think a service to learn how to use MATLAB would have that big of market.
Maybe an interesting and disruptive swing would be to enable the power of matlab-functionality to be abstracted to allow less sophisticated users to use it? Wolfram Alpha is in some ways this, but it could be tied into other services better.