I see this all the time with the startup founders I work with. It's a version of the IKEA effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect http://en.wikipedia.o

I see this all the time with the startup founders I work with. It's a version of the IKEA effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect). Many founders (myself included) find it difficult to scrap an idea they have created and are emotionally attached to, even after seeing strong evidence to the contrary. I often wonder if YC has seen better results from teams that were accepted without an idea (granted, it's likely a much smaller sample size to work from). I wonder if that somehow makes them less susceptible to this tendency for founders to place a disproportionately high value on the quality of their idea(s), allowing them to focus more broadly on markets and identifying real problems to solve.