These founders got rejected from Y Combinator four times. Here's how they finally got in.

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Getting into Y Combinator isn't easy: the prestigious Silicon Valley startup incubator accepts less than 5% of the hundreds of applicants that apply to its program. Often, startup founders will apply multiple times before they're granted so much as an interview.

No one knows the struggle of getting into Y Combinator better than partners Karn Saroya and Natalie Gray, who applied four times before they were finally accepted on their fifth application.

By the time Saroya and Gray applied to YC the fifth time, they had successfully sold the company they had originally pitched, a fashion application called StyleKick. While selling a company helped the pair snag Y Combinator's attention on their new business concept the fifth time around, there were tweaks they'd made in their application that helped them build a better business concept.

Here are a few of their takeaways:

You don't need a high quality video to pitch.

The first time Saroya and Gray applied to YC, they put a lot of thought into their pitch video.

"We had a script, lighting. We had everything," said Saroya. "It was really dumb. We shouldn't have done that, but we didn't know what we were being judged on."

Turns out, video production wasn't it. The video Saroya and Gray finally got accepted with was completed in one take, Saroya said.

"We did it in about 15 minutes," he said. "Natalie had just rolled out of bed...our dog was yapping in the background. But we'd realized that what they were looking for was a succinct description of our business, and we'd homed in on what we wanted to do. With [our first pitch], there was so much ambiguity about what we were trying to do."

Don't use jargon.

"The goal with your pitch is to help the naive observer understand very quickly what it is you're doing and why it can be important or impactful," said Saroya. "A lot of the time, that's manifested in super concise writing. We learned those lessons the hard way."

It's especially important to not prop up your ideas using jargon language, said Saroya. "There needs to be no business jargon. You need to get down to the essence of your business narrative right from the start."

The ultimate goal isn't getting into Y Combinator.

While it might sound counterintuitive, Saroya said the ultimate goal in applying to Y Combinator isn't getting in.

"You have to remember that you're there to build a business and not to get into YC. YC is a forcing function that helps you determine whether or not you are on the path to find product fit," said Saroya. "YC is not a school. You're competing in the real world for your company to survive. Focus on that."

See the rest of the story at Business Insider