I see a lot of discussion about YC, but I don't think this has much to do with YC as much as it does with the market in general. The two really important thing

I see a lot of discussion about YC, but I don't think this has much to do with YC as much as it does with the market in general. The two really important things I took away from this were: 1) Instead of trying to make credentials harder to hack, we can also make them matter less. > Comment: I think this is a general statement being made, correct me if I'm wrong. I didn't think this was a "At YC, we can make credentials matter less." I see this happening at the successful startups. They no longer say "B.S. in C.S. required" they say it's "optional, or equivalent experience." I would say that is brilliant. 2) Now we seem to be entering a new era based on measurement. > Comment: I would agree 100%, and I'm glad you used the example of East Asian culture. There was a lot of turmoil, but one of the biggest things was feudalistic societies. If you haven't read the Biography of Yukichi Fukuzawa, I would highly recommend it (especially if you're an entrepreneur). His father hated Japan because it was feudalistic, so where he exerted the most effort and was far more intelligent than his superiors, he never moved up. Your position in society was not driven by merit, it was essentially determined by your family and birth. That frustrated a lot of the people who were very smart, even though they lacked "credentials" of going to a nice school because they couldn't afford it (or taking the Civil Service Exams for the same reason).