> It can almost sound simple but that's really really hard. It really _is_ hard. No way is it easy > I say that as someone who has spent the last couple years

> It can almost sound simple but that's really really hard. It really _is_ hard. No way is it easy > I say that as someone who has spent the last couple years talking with my friends about whether they would be interested in being co-founders for startup ideas and searching for problems in my own experience that would make for scalable ideas. That is the biggest problem in getting it going. You have to be able to convince others to share your vision. But isn't it easier to do with long-time friends than that guy you met last summer? When you know someone for long enough, you will have the confidence that you'll stick together through the friendly breezes and the wild storms > Are good hackers That is a requirement for a good reason. The founders are the only guys initially who give a sh*t about the product. Say a customer makes a support call, being able to quickly respond and fix the bug can mean life or death. You need at least one hacker who can do this. Better if every founder is one. > I go out and talk to companies and I don't see much of what YC explicitly asks for. YC in no way has the magic portion. They just have a set of things they believe are positive indicators, which are mostly right, but not fulfulling one/all of these no way means you can't build a successful startup > It's not far fetched to imagine they interview nearly 100% of the teams that fit the profile above. That's not surprising, is it? If 70% of the slots were filled with applicants that fulfilled 100% criteria, then they might loosen some of the criteria (like single founder teams, idea stage etc), but with the momentum that YC's gotten, I bet 100% of the slots get filled with startups that fulfill 100% of their criteria (and more, those corner cases). So obviously, they'll stick to their criteria (which has been working for them)