Getting 70 or so high caliber founders and pooling their respective strengths is a huge advantage. Usually the press talks about the valuable advice and connec

Getting 70 or so high caliber founders and pooling their respective strengths is a huge advantage. Usually the press talks about the valuable advice and connections offered by the YC partners - this is just as big though. Everyone gets advice from the best sys admins, designers, etc, from across the batch. The biggest successes online always seem to have some sort of marketplace for a business model - Google, Ebay, Paypal, etc. Not surprisingly, as YC seems on track to becoming a big hit, they have managed to find such a model. They are becoming a market place for top founders to network and exchange ideas. This would be very hard to recreate in an unstructured environment (like a co-op), because trust is essential.