YC pretty openly and deliberately tries to convince prospective and actual Big Tech employees who are curious or on the fence to quit and do a startup already.

YC pretty openly and deliberately tries to convince prospective and actual Big Tech employees who are curious or on the fence to quit and do a startup already. There's a great Startup School video about this [0]. I think the critics are right about "doing a startup" and chasing an exit having become an equally normal, precedented, socially-supported path as joining a big company and chasing promotions. But I'd be surprised if YC itself would characterize that as failure. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sM2reZib2RY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sM2reZib2RY