This is a half-thought-out and cynical musing, but couldn't you use something like this as a honeypot to weed out the people who are less likely to succeed and

This is a half-thought-out and cynical musing, but couldn't you use something like this as a honeypot to weed out the people who are less likely to succeed and thus give them less scrutiny? I'm guessing YC gets a LOT of applications and going through them has turned into something of a burden, a problem not easily solved without adding more staff or lowering standards, neither of which is probably attractive. So how can you use the process itself to get people to sort themselves somewhat? Hypothesis: you come up with a bunch of startup ideas in big spaces where no easy solutions exist, but many many startups have gone and failed. These apps go in the "paint-by-numbers" pile and get less scrutiny, because you figure two things: 1. For someone who doesn't have an idea or a problem to solve, they'll look at YC and see this list of pre-existing problems that need solutions. They could learn a domain or a space really well and organically come up with their own idea, or they could use one of these. We assume that people in that situation who pick the easier path will probably come up with solutions that suck, but that's ok, because it keeps fewer apps from the "artisan" pile, which get much heavier attention. 2. If someone does submit an app to the "paint-by-numbers" pile that is truly novel or brilliant, it'll probably leap off the page, so all is not lost. I guess my overall hypothesis is that people who need to pick an idea off a list like this and/or don't know enough about a space to come up with their own idea are probably unlikely to succeed. This just gives them an opportunity to declare so more readily :) I'm sure that YC isn't doing this, but would it be useful?