Hacker News Reader

Comment by rdl | Hacker News Reader

I'd like to see some YC people (dang? kevin?) go through the entire list and find 25 or so great ones. Then, ask those people to flesh out their apps a bit more, then have discussion and community voting.

I'd be fine trusting YC to make the first pass, and community make the final selection.

View on HN

I think the whole point of the experiment was to select applicants YC would not normally pick. This would bring back all YC biases.

Quoting dang "If it seems unstructured, that's on purpose: we don't want to bias it along the lines of how YC already operates. We want to see what the community comes up with."

Having read through many of the applications, I think that we could safely get down to 25 without risking throwing out any that deserve the win. There just weren't all that many applications that clearly described a remotely plausible business idea and that had founders who posted thoughtful responses. I would say that at least half of the applications seemed like a hobby or an idea that had been simmering in the back of someone's mind, with little to no thought given to how it could turn into a viable business.

I made exactly the same suggestion having read through most of them now. Many of the applications are good, but they seem to not be a match for the fellowship program.

I'd be ok with YC or someone doing an extremely loose first pass filtering, even if that results in 100, too.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com