4 ms·

Maybe the site could run news.yc. YC alumni get accounts and vote up good applications. The cream rises to the top.

by msg 17y ago

cperciva 17y ago
I don't think voting would be a good way to do this. Now, YC applications are different from scholarship applications or honourary degree nominations (which are the areas where I have the most experience judging); but if they're not too different, there are going to be some very good applications which most people don't immediately recognize as good. I often find that out of a large committee, some of the best applications are only noticed by one person -- but when he/she says "seriously, I think this one is really worth looking at", everybody else will look closely enough to recognize the application's merits. Simply having everybody vote yea/nay will result in obscure applications being lost when people default to nay.
- abossy 17y ago
  It sounds like a classic case of groupthink, something I would think YC founders would be highly susceptible to.
  - cperciva 17y ago
    I think groupthink is far more of a problem when people see "hey, this has been voted up to 10" than when people hear a reasoned argument for why they should read an application which they previously ignored.
  - drusenko 17y ago
    To fight against that -- maybe you could make the total number of votes an application has gotten (it's score) invisible to the people doing the voting?
- msg 17y ago
  I wasn't talking about doing polls only. Each application would get a discussion thread, so there is room for someone to write a passionate essay or whatever. I agree that there are issues with exposing voting. Maybe it would be interesting to shuffle the number of votes at first, see what happens when an application that was below the fold shoots to the top. (Maybe news.yc should do this too?) The advantage of voting is that you can quickly flag wastes of time. In, e.g., fiction publishing, the ratio of acceptable to crap is 1 to 100 or worse, because any idiot can and does write a novel. You don't need to know everything as a reader to be able to eliminate the crap. I think what you are really worried about is a situation where you have so many winners that there's no time to find the diamond in the rough. I don't think that's different from these startups' current situation though. They need to stand head and shoulders above the competition in some manner. They might as well start now.
  - david927 17y ago
    quickly flag wastes of time Exactly. The startup would have to opt to be publicly vetted, but it would make a lot of sense. The worries of group-think are overrated. I think most would happily allow it and be grateful for the feedback and to see how they rate. It takes some of the stress off of YC and lets a very smart community get involved. It's a win-win, really.
- webwright 17y ago
  You can deal with that using some scarcity. Give each team 10 apps to rate. You could allow them to vote "good" or "bad" for all apps, but give them one "Drop everything and fund this" star that they can dole out. Ideally, distribute enough that each app gets rated by 2 or 3 teams and you could sort the list by star count first, and yes-to-no ratio second.

Maybe the site could run news.yc. YC alumni get accounts and vote up good applications. The cream rises to the top.

by msg 17y ago

Maybe the site could run news.yc. YC alumni get accounts and vote up good applications. The cream rises to the top.

I don't think voting would be a good way to do this. Now, YC applications are different from scholarship applications or honourary degree nominations (which are the areas where I have the most experience judging); but if they're not too different, there are going to be some very good applications which most people don't immediately recognize as good. I often find that out of a large committee, some of the best applications are only noticed by one person -- but when he/she says "seriously, I think this one is really worth looking at", everybody else will look closely enough to recognize the application's merits. Simply having everybody vote yea/nay will result in obscure applications being lost when people default to nay.

abossy 17y ago
It sounds like a classic case of groupthink, something I would think YC founders would be highly susceptible to.
- cperciva 17y ago
  I think groupthink is far more of a problem when people see "hey, this has been voted up to 10" than when people hear a reasoned argument for why they should read an application which they previously ignored.
- drusenko 17y ago
  To fight against that -- maybe you could make the total number of votes an application has gotten (it's score) invisible to the people doing the voting?
msg 17y ago
I wasn't talking about doing polls only. Each application would get a discussion thread, so there is room for someone to write a passionate essay or whatever. I agree that there are issues with exposing voting. Maybe it would be interesting to shuffle the number of votes at first, see what happens when an application that was below the fold shoots to the top. (Maybe news.yc should do this too?) The advantage of voting is that you can quickly flag wastes of time. In, e.g., fiction publishing, the ratio of acceptable to crap is 1 to 100 or worse, because any idiot can and does write a novel. You don't need to know everything as a reader to be able to eliminate the crap. I think what you are really worried about is a situation where you have so many winners that there's no time to find the diamond in the rough. I don't think that's different from these startups' current situation though. They need to stand head and shoulders above the competition in some manner. They might as well start now.
- david927 17y ago
  quickly flag wastes of time Exactly. The startup would have to opt to be publicly vetted, but it would make a lot of sense. The worries of group-think are overrated. I think most would happily allow it and be grateful for the feedback and to see how they rate. It takes some of the stress off of YC and lets a very smart community get involved. It's a win-win, really.
webwright 17y ago
You can deal with that using some scarcity. Give each team 10 apps to rate. You could allow them to vote "good" or "bad" for all apps, but give them one "Drop everything and fund this" star that they can dole out. Ideally, distribute enough that each app gets rated by 2 or 3 teams and you could sort the list by star count first, and yes-to-no ratio second.