There might not be space left? I know of a few companies that have already been admitted, and they're filling slots fast.
I don't know how much they budget for overflow.
Don't let me discourage you. I'm just following my own suspicions. My company is at a $2M run rate and I'm thinking I shouldn't bother applying since I missed the window.
(Dang, care to comment?)
I still want OP to make the best of their time in YC and their runway. There are plenty of other great ideas out there rather than being a freight train hop-on.
I agree, even if they decide to persist with this, they need to grow into a more robust business (ex. focusing on the abandoned cart followup niche) than just being an API that can get shut down overnight.
And yeah it's definitely late, but I'll just take what you said as a push to actually bang it out today and try to fight my tendency to write and say way too much on those kind of things, haha. It's only half tech related anyway, similar problem space as Firstbase.