Tell HN: Ever think of applying to YC? Do it this weekend for S24

It doesn’t in mine, but it does in the VC’s who are investing in YC startups - making them and their LPs a lot less patient due to increased cost of capital for the whole industry.

Dang is basically saying what we all know: it is very difficult to predict future performance of people, and YC deliberately tries to avoid common traps like “where did you go to school?” I mean, they still ask, so they aren’t exactly all-in on avoiding noisy heuristics, but they have a history of finding founders who can perform at a level most would-be founders can’t.

Like the blub paradox, only past high performers can recognize future high performers. YC uses the “are you one of us?” heuristic, which isn’t perfect since many “high performers” are accidents of fortune, but it is (as of now) still the best way to identify high-impact people — be one yourself and talk to people.

It’s the same story with hiring, especially in sports drafting. Even with million-dollar budgets and years of game-film and intensive pre-draft workouts, sports teams are effectively guessing when they draft someone. Analytically, it would be better to trade down for more picks. Dang’s post is analogous to trading down, in the sense of letting people know that the net is wider than most of us think, precisely because high-performing founders don’t fit the same mold as high-performing non-founders.

Having said all that, I’d be very surprised if the people reading all the applications and conducting all the interviews were all true high-performers. Surely some proportion, if not a majority, would merely be excellent human beings that were fortunate enough to find success. In fact, perseverance and grit may not be as important to founders as we think. It may be that the trait of never giving up is just very effective at leveraging fortune — given enough time, something good is bound to happen. This feels like an algorithm-smell. What we really want are founders who don’t need fortune, not those who optimize for fortune.

PG is a good example. I only know what he’s told us, but it seems to me that his defining trait is not grit. After one obvious pivot, he worked hard, provided value to users, and exited. Now, anyone who works 18 hr days for years has grit. You can’t succeed at something without persevering at it. But that’s not what stands out about PG. Neither does his intellect. There’s plenty of brilliant people in the world. What stands out about him is his genius — a unique mental perspective that sees straight lines where others see jagged lines. He and his partners basically invented the web-app. Where others saw a broken road going nowhere, they saw a highway to immense value.

The problem with genius is that it is really hard to distinguish from delusion. Someone tells you the road is straight but you see nothing but curves — what is one to think? When the person telling you this obvious untruth is also brilliant, it makes it that much harder to discern genius from delusion. PG writes about this when talking about “black swans” — the best ideas are the ideas that seem wrong but are actually right.

To return to YC and applying, I think it is likely that the brilliant geniuses (like PG) have largely moved on to other things that seem of far more interest to them. Raising children, speaking from experience, definitely fits that bill. If true, then what remains of YC would be brilliant, persevering, but not necessarily genius. That still makes for a world-class accelerator, but one that would struggle at identifying the best founders.

I would propose a new heuristic: has the applicant ever accidentally discovered the truth of something already known to be true, but which the applicant was unaware of. Did they make a straight line out of a broken one, without knowing it had already been straightened by others.

Call this the “unknowingly reinventing the wheel” heuristic. When did the applicant accidentally reinvent the wheel? As stupidly black-swan as it sounds, I want founders who are not merely brilliant and persevering, but also genius enough to invent something as profoundly valuable as the wheel.

I bet there are plenty of people in this thread who have unknowingly reinvented the wheel, and would love to hear the stories!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1H2sRRzQHwJX8JAgXUS0vyhZg... I finished writing up my response. Still need to do the video tomorrow.

Like I said, I'm positive this just isn't compelling enough, but hey it was fun answering all the q's :)

It's a great product. With a SaaS with 109K revenue a month why do you need YC? I guess you want the network and advice which makes sense. Can help you reduce risk and provide an imprintaur of "premium credibility" (for want of better word!!) and aid access to US market and investors.

Your costs must be high, have you considered colo or lower cost cloud providers like Hetzner? I'm sure you have but just sayin!! :)

But I'm curious what have other investors said? It seems like with your combination of desire to raise, AI, revenue and great product you will have investors already beating a path to your door??

Biases are the result of our collective experiences, exposures & limitations accumulated over time. And we all have inherent biases to some degree shaped by our past & present, hence biases with all its flaws is a mental apparatus that people employ to understand stuffs. As such YC or any VCs aren’t immune to forming biases of their own. And given the massive volume of applications they have to go through under time constraints; they must definitely take into account multiple factors and signals that aligns with their biases in the context of their past successes.. And whatever biases that’s taken shape over time, as long as they are right most of the time, it does make it reasonable albeit it’s inherent flaws which might miss out on some exceptional founders in few cases.

However biases mostly work in information vacuum or when there’s limited set of information to take way from on ideas that are really early or unexplored. I imagine measurable results on the context of your startup idea is the best antidote to YC biases in most cases. For founders lacking in other aspects; I imagine the only viable option is to weigh in with quantifiable results. YC and other VCs might have their biases in some aspects, but there’s one common bias everyone is victim to which is “RESULTS”. So for simple founders like me who is limited by the structure of the application process, I have found a loophole which is for every section that vaguely masks your background or accomplishments, there are also sections that asks for results and numbers which is where you can derive favorable outcome from. And for that very reason, I am trying to game YC biases by focusing primarily on results.