The Irony of Applying to YC

As we were clicking "submit" the other day, I was thinking about what separates the teams that get accepted from the teams that don't. There are a bunch of criteria we're judged on, but perhaps the most important (and the source of the irony I'm talking about) is that for a team to be accepted, it can't need YC.

That doesn't mean, of course, that being YC alums isn't wonderful and helpful and all the rest. What it does mean is that the people who get in are exactly the kind of people who would respond best to not getting in--namely by keeping busy on the company as if nothing had happened.

It's a frequent theme in PG's essays that YC takes people for whom building cool things is a bodily function, not something they need external incentives or security to do. This same irony applies to nearly every competitive application process (e.g. PG's other advice that companies obsessed with getting bought are the very ones that don't get bought). I feel that keeping that in mind is a very useful approach to these things.

And good luck!

This kind of situation is prevalent in so many parts of life. I've wasted so much time trying to concisely explain it that I've often found myself wishing there was a simple name/reference for it.

How about "Catch 4!-2".

From the perspective of future YC startup investors, this situation is roughly analogous to the difference between winning an honorary degree verse getting a "merit-based" degree.

People post all the time on Slashdot/Reddit complaining about the unfairness of honorary degrees. That being said, if you're about to go into surgery then which would you prefer, the doctor who earned a degree from the best medical school in the country or the doctor who was awarded an honorary degree from the best medical school in the country? I'll take the surgeon with the honorary degree any day. All the traditional degree signals is that you had good grades is college, and who cares what grades your doctor had in college? I'd much rather go for the doctor whose already recognized as the best in their field.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this exactly, but I guess my point was that the people who are already most likely to succeed on their own are the ones who get the biggest social signaling value from joining YC, if in fact the system works as you say.

edit: The appropriate buzzwords here would have been "selection effects" vs. "treatment effects" (and that selection is better than treatment for social signaling purposes).

That's definitely the reason we applied. When they came out, reviews of Fooled By Randomness and The Black Swan said wisely that for people who want to get into scalable jobs^, the main lesson of the books is to expose yourself to as much randomness as possible and to just get out there and do your thing. Success is built on a small number of big breaks, so you need to put yourself in a situation where your chances for lucky breaks are as big as possible. YC fits into that brilliantly, as does the argument in favor of moving to a startup hub.

^A scalable job, according to Taleb, is any job where given success, the amount of money you make is vastly disproportionate to the amount of time you put in--like starting a company, or becoming an actor or musician. A non-scalable job is something like dentistry, where the amount of money you make always stays pretty closely tied to the hours you work.

Y-Combinator is an edge. Y-Combinator is a valuable resource; peer review, networking, and heavy motivation. These are things not easily gained on your own. If you really need Y-Combinator to gain success, then you better question yourself and what you offer. Personally, I know my idea will revolutionize the industry it pertains to, but submitting an application to Y-Combinator is giving me the needed kick in the butt to jump on the progress train. It's been brewing for years and tonight I'm excited. I don't need Y-Combinator, but right now I want it!