Actually very few startups are fake. Companies look fake in retrospect if they make something that flops and then get HR acquired, but very few founders I enco

Actually very few startups are fake. Companies look fake in retrospect if they make something that flops and then get HR acquired, but very few founders I encounter are deliberately aiming for that path. What I suggested in "Hiring is Obsolete" is not that founders build something random to get the attention of acquirers, but that they build the product the acquirer should have built. I'm advocating founders aim for product acquisitions, not HR acquisitions. And no proportion of HR acquisitions would be enough to affect the character of YC. Not only are we not interested intellectually in funding companies that fail, we probably net lose money on them.