YC’s founder-matching service helped medical records AI startup Hona

(Gender is optional.)

Also, once you get past that User Profile, to the founder-matching Profile, the very top of the first form says "Your profile will get much more attention if you add a picture." Why implicitly endorse that, which has undesirable historic baggage of prejudice and unfairness?

In hindsight, I realize that the prominence of schools on the profiles (and the text field using the example of Stanford) didn't jump out at me, maybe because it's common on a US resume (unlike gender, birthdate, or photo).

Maybe other people will have additional "what?" reactions to other things in the forms.

Edit: On the matching profile form, it won't let you submit the form and proceed until you add a photo. ("Please fix the errors below before continuing.") I was able to get past that by uploading a blank image, but I'm not going to proceed further if it seems like current YC thinking isn't a match for me.

My schools included MIT and Brown. And I generally really liked the students at both. And I would hire many of them.

But I've also hung out in other circles that attract smart people, where I'd selectively hire first, before prioritizing random people from the fancy-pants schools.

And I've worked too many places where some of the smartest and most accomplished people came from BFE schools.

Also, note that undergrad programs have gotten insane with the gaming and the hoop-jumping. Even worse than when it was helicopter parents merely sending kids to prep schools, SAT prep, and the checkoff extracurriculars (e.g., "volunteering"). And that insanity can select for what you don't want to hire, to do actual work.

If you want "How to Start Google [where everyone focuses on the entrance exam, and then on gaming their promotions]" then you absolutely should hire Stanford students, who had to exercise very similar thinking to get into Stanford at this point.

Or, if you want to run a startup investment scam, where you need to apply some similar thinking of the appearance of accomplishments, and knocking down ducks lined up for you.

But if you want to solve problems, or build something that's not just headed for a financial exit, then Stanford-track kind of thinking seems probably counterproductive.

Imagine getting a new hire at an early startup, and they innately think that their job is to knock off sprint tasks, and have other appearances of performance.

And when you try to explain thinking about the organization's goals, and that their job is to help the team collectively achieve that... they think you're just spewing empty platitudes, like they were taught to spew for college application personal statements and job interviews.

You would've been so much better off hiring the scrappy person from the community college who hasn't had Stanford-track BS baked into them since grade school.

One of YC's overriding beliefs is that yes, your idea doesn't matter at all.