Given her track record, I doubt Leah Culver's new company is the best example of a team who "really needed ramen money to get out the door." But that's besides

Given her track record, I doubt Leah Culver's new company is the best example of a team who "really needed ramen money to get out the door." But that's besides the point. The point is, YC used to be a program that was 'taking a chance,' by its very existence. Now that it's established, I feel like the world expects them to keep taking more chances - both on the types of people it invests in, and in the process of investing. It's definitely doing that in a number of ways (the Yuri thing, scaling, taking on more partners) - but the aspiring applicants here who haven't yet seen traction (or learned what traction is) see themselves as what YC should be taking more chances on. This may just an extension of the scaling question - with 1,000 applicants, how do you pick out the teams that just need time to prove themselves, and how do you make room for them in a crowded program to give them the mentorship they need?