On my part, after 6 years of applying, I have 3x the salary and responsibility as an employee that I used to. Being more financially secure and feeling more pro

On my part, after 6 years of applying, I have 3x the salary and responsibility as an employee that I used to. Being more financially secure and feeling more professionally relevant are strong forces for complacency. But for me, the most important thing was realizing what it takes to be successful as a founder (and in getting into YC), and that I lacked those things: excellent co-founders, an MVP, and traction. While it is true that YC still accepts startups that have solo-founders, no product, or no traction, I don’t think it accepts many that lack all three traits. The furthest along I got at YC was when I had a real co-founder (not someone I roped into it) and a prototype. I’ll apply again when I have something useful to accelerate. So I gave up on the dream of YC being dumb enough to look at me and say, “well, there are no signs of success here, but hell, let’s roll the dice and see what happens!” Tangentially, in terms of seeing less passion for startups at HN, there has been a very distinct shift in HN’s content and focus that occurred when PG stopped participating in comments and stopped writing as many essays. It reached a tipping point sometime over the last year, where I now often ask, “Where have all the hackers gone?” My suspicion is that there is a private forum of YC alumni and friends, and friends of friends, that has replaced HN as the go-to destination for fascinating, insightful, and provocative discourse. Perhaps it isn’t private, and perhaps it isn’t YC alumni-based, but if you could have such conversations (again), would you want to reveal its existence to the masses? Not unless you wanted to see it become what HN has become: a fun but flimsy off-site subreddit. Since I think this thread is going to be overlooked by most people, I’d like to make the case for clueing me in here and sending me an invite. ;)