Nah, I'd say they reinforce the mold. 1) I don't ever remember pg saying 3 or 4 is too many founders 2) Lots of YC companies have only programmers 3) Product

Nah, I'd say they reinforce the mold. 1) I don't ever remember pg saying 3 or 4 is too many founders 2) Lots of YC companies have only programmers 3) Products: They made something people want. That's pg's main harping point - MAKE SOMETHING PEOPLE WANT. That's the implicit social contract in YC: If you make something people want, you will get a t-shirt that says "I made something people want." Pricing, open source, community, framework, monetization, etc are all details.