I completely agree. You sometimes hear in interviews partners talking about how some companies sometimes convince them of one thing but turn out to not be able

I completely agree. You sometimes hear in interviews partners talking about how some companies sometimes convince them of one thing but turn out to not be able to execute on their plans. As in they sound really convincing but don't really know what they're talking about. Of course, what is "hacking"? Most of what founders do to get into YC isn't hacking the application. Writing a good application and getting lots of feedback isn't hacking it. Asking founders you don't know for recommendations could be but in a negative way but a recommendation isn't easy to get as it's on their back. If you lie about or fake parts of your application the partners will very quickly pickup on this as they've seen thousands of teams and YC founders who have applied themselves. By the way, this could be considered a trick/hack to attempt to butter-up the reader and instill a level of confidence in the authors credibility.