I may be the public face of the company, but it's impossible to imagine YC doing something that Jessica, Kirsty, and Carolynn were against. So effectively they

I may be the public face of the company, but it's impossible to imagine YC doing something that Jessica, Kirsty, and Carolynn were against. So effectively they have veto powers. This sounds a bit like "my wife runs the house, I'm only allowed to do what she lets me do." I know that's not what you mean, but you come off sounding too defensive in most of the essay. Stop playing defense with words, let your actions (or YC results speak for themselves). More importantly, take a step back to truly understand the problem and perhaps study some solutions that have worked in other industries. Why do I think you should do some more studying? Because you still make comments like this: "You can tell what the pool of potential startup founders looks like. There’s a bunch of ways you can do it. You can go on Google and search for audience photos of PyCon." You made a similar comment two years ago [1]. Because of statements in your essay like the ones highlighted by parfe in the parent post and by me in this post. These statements don't mean anything, they carry no weight, and I'm surprised you would think they do. All your best friends could be Martians and you could be actively trying to destroy every Martian on Mars, except your friends of course. One does not preclude the other. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3256052 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3256052