A few thoughts as an outside observer... - You won't know until 10 years from now. Even still, it won't be enough to say they missed a lot of firms. Of cours

A few thoughts as an outside observer... - You won't know until 10 years from now. Even still, it won't be enough to say they missed a lot of firms. Of course they will. They can't possibly have 100% market share. A sign of the them turning into a large boring behemoth is if they miss all of them. - If they are too worried about missing a Dropbox, then that risk taking will cause them to miss the next big thing. - As long as it's entrepreneurs making the decision on who gets into YC, they have a big shot of taking risks. My sense is most of the YC crew is independently wealthy, and are keeping score by "great companies" rather than "minimizing variance of returns". - All this said, the amount of YC firms acquired by larger tech companies suggest that they are filling an important niche of being the R&D investment arm of large firms who aren't structured to chase ideas that seem too crazy.