I'm not sure they are either, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. I also lean towards the approach of learning from others and studying the ecology of exist

I'm not sure they are either, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. I also lean towards the approach of learning from others and studying the ecology of existing designs, but I think that betrays a designer's bias:) The YC ethic seems to be more on the side of agile programming and prototyping in code and it's an alternative approach that can also work well, given an extremely capable set of coders. By the way, I like your focus as a product incubator, that's a good differentiator. I recently changed my linkedin title to "an interaction designer specializing in early stage startups" and am slowly finding an underground culture of bay area designers in the same scene - it's good to see we're not all snapped up by ad agencies and big companies.