>In general, people seem to assume that: 1) although there was some degree of mystery or luck about how YC got going, it can’t be that hard Who are these peopl

>In general, people seem to assume that: 1) although there was some degree of mystery or luck about how YC got going, it can’t be that hard Who are these people? Have they heard of supply and demand? How can anyone think making a profitable company from ground zero 'can't be that hard'? > 2) if you can get it off the ground, the network effects are self-sustaining. Why would a company that's essentially a filter in between people with money and people with promises have network effects? If anything, the reverse is true - as any company gets bigger, it gets worse at maintaining quality. This can be trivially seen empirically with how much large tech corps spend on R&D and yet how boring, incremental and downright sad many of their new offerings are (new emojis anyone?) Where are the results from all the billions spent? I guess the new macbook keyboards are an innovation, oh wait... The only way a filter is strengthened by network effects, is if the filter is increasingly irrelevant and through-put is what matters (spray and pray > being picky). So either it is spray and pray and then it 'isn't that hard' indeed if you have the right connections (born rich, have been introduced to billionaire friends of your father/mother), or it isn't spray and pray, but then there are no self sustaining network effects to be had.