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YC is only arbitrary to the extent we are stupid, and though we certainly do make mistakes in deciding who to fund, we have some fairly smart people expending a

by pg 14y ago

_pius 14y ago
YC is only arbitrary to the extent we are stupid, and though we certainly do make mistakes in deciding who to fund, we have some fairly smart people expending a lot of effort on the problem; I don't think we simply fund whoever's best at tricking us into funding them. True, but an equivalent statement can be made by a decision maker at any other reputable credentialing institution as well. How is this substantively different from what an admissions officer at MIT would say? I think the GP's point is that, for the credential obsessed, "getting into YC" is just the "getting a Rhodes Scholarship" or "getting a Supreme Court clerkship" for our milieu. I don't think that is an indictment of YC in the least. Ultimately the OP's argument boils down to the claim that YC solves the credentials trap by ... transforming starting a startup into a credential, as long as it's done with the YC imprimatur. Hardly a solution at all. (Ironically, there is a solid argument to be made about how your essays have done a huge amount to legitimize the act of founding a startup and embolden erstwhile credential seekers to take that risk, even if it doesn't come with a name brand institution attached to it. The author fails to make that point, though.)
- pg 14y ago
  You answered your own question in the next sentence. If we were bad at picking people, how could we have become the equivalent of getting a Supreme Court clerkship in 8 years?
  - _pius 14y ago
    "If we were bad at picking people ..." I'm not saying you're bad at picking people. And, for partially self-serving reasons, I don't think MIT is bad at picking people, either. I'm saying that your ability to pick people is orthogonal to whether or not YC solves Chris Dixon's credential trap. The "trap" is a pathological behavior in the seeker, not a claim that credentials are meaningless or that the people who award them are incompetent. Moreover, one can't arbitrarily claim that graduating from a top program in one's field is merely a credential, but completing the top accelerator isn't. They're both valuable, but neither of them is "solving" the credential problem.
bhntr3 14y ago
Couldn't one say the same thing about the Stanford admissions board or the Google hiring board? They're extremely smart people expending a lot of effort on the problem of selecting the most likely to succeeds from a group of candidates. I guess it's an issue of defining the ultimate goal. If the ultimate goal is being a co-founder of a successful startup then YC is likely the key penultimate step in the ultimate achievement whereas Google and Stanford are potential credential traps. But if the ultimate goal is a PHD at Stanford or a research fellowship at Google, then maybe YC is the credential trap erroneously viewed as a step on the path?

by pg 14y ago

_pius 14y ago

YC is only arbitrary to the extent we are stupid, and though we certainly do make mistakes in deciding who to fund, we have some fairly smart people expending a lot of effort on the problem; I don't think we simply fund whoever's best at tricking us into funding them. True, but an equivalent statement can be made by a decision maker at any other reputable credentialing institution as well. How is this substantively different from what an admissions officer at MIT would say? I think the GP's point is that, for the credential obsessed, "getting into YC" is just the "getting a Rhodes Scholarship" or "getting a Supreme Court clerkship" for our milieu. I don't think that is an indictment of YC in the least. Ultimately the OP's argument boils down to the claim that YC solves the credentials trap by ... transforming starting a startup into a credential, as long as it's done with the YC imprimatur. Hardly a solution at all. (Ironically, there is a solid argument to be made about how your essays have done a huge amount to legitimize the act of founding a startup and embolden erstwhile credential seekers to take that risk, even if it doesn't come with a name brand institution attached to it. The author fails to make that point, though.)

pg 14y ago
You answered your own question in the next sentence. If we were bad at picking people, how could we have become the equivalent of getting a Supreme Court clerkship in 8 years?
- _pius 14y ago
  "If we were bad at picking people ..." I'm not saying you're bad at picking people. And, for partially self-serving reasons, I don't think MIT is bad at picking people, either. I'm saying that your ability to pick people is orthogonal to whether or not YC solves Chris Dixon's credential trap. The "trap" is a pathological behavior in the seeker, not a claim that credentials are meaningless or that the people who award them are incompetent. Moreover, one can't arbitrarily claim that graduating from a top program in one's field is merely a credential, but completing the top accelerator isn't. They're both valuable, but neither of them is "solving" the credential problem.

bhntr3 14y ago

Couldn't one say the same thing about the Stanford admissions board or the Google hiring board? They're extremely smart people expending a lot of effort on the problem of selecting the most likely to succeeds from a group of candidates. I guess it's an issue of defining the ultimate goal. If the ultimate goal is being a co-founder of a successful startup then YC is likely the key penultimate step in the ultimate achievement whereas Google and Stanford are potential credential traps. But if the ultimate goal is a PHD at Stanford or a research fellowship at Google, then maybe YC is the credential trap erroneously viewed as a step on the path?