Narcissism is a trait and NPD or malignant narcissism is a disorder. The counter to "over confidence" is that PG and Altman suggest to give more equity with be

Narcissism is a trait and NPD or malignant narcissism is a disorder. The counter to "over confidence" is that PG and Altman suggest to give more equity with better terms to employees rather than not which suggests they aren't actually looking for narcissists. A narcissist would view everyone else as inferior and transactional. Maybe they have some criteria they use to try to weed out narcissists. I would imagine the YC network and organization itself would quickly route out a narcissist since they use a cohort model. In that a narcissist won't be able to listen or consider other viewpoints effectively and I imagine not being able to pivot when necessary is a narcissistic trait and obviously leads to the failure of the startup. I don't think a narcissist can survive the trough of disillusionment for long... but I could be mistaken.