Hacker News Reader

The shortcomings of this noxious but common "prove you're a genius by your ROI" attitude is exactly why Y Combinator has been as successful as it has been.

There is no mystery here. PG, JL, TLB and RTM obviously thought highly of many people when entering YC, even more highly when they got to see them up close, and even more so as they worked closely with them. They see their value. And that's why Sam Altman is the CEO of YC.

Believe it or not, the YC partners and leadership are actually better judges of ability than the market. It could never work otherwise.

>Believe it or not, the YC partners and leadership are actually better judges of ability than the market. It could never work otherwise.

Not quite. Many of the best startups choose to apply to YC because of this perception that YC is so good. Startups are not like stocks, investing in them is not something you can just click a button to do. So regular 'beat the market' reasoning doesn't apply.

Once a place is considered a great place to take good ideas, a relatively stupid person can pick between them pretty easily and get a good outcome. Because so many good companies think to apply to YC, YC has a pretty good success rate, thus perpetuating the idea that YC is so good.

> Believe it or not, the YC partners and leadership are actually better judges of ability than the market. It could never work otherwise.

Doesnt match

> It was sold years later for less than the money the investors had put into it.

No contradiction. YC likes Altman more than the market liked Altman's company. YC sees more potential than was manifest in that startup.

I have no opinion on his brilliance, just pointing out there's no mismatch.

> Believe it or not, the YC partners and leadership are actually better judges of ability than the market.

And how would you measure that?

> The chief requirement is just to not screw up a good thing.

I think Sam went way beyond that and took big steps with things like open ai

> a YC insider he gets to invest at the earliest stage for the best looking start-ups

Sam was investing himself before joining YC as CEO. I can find only https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/hydrazine-capital/in... but there might be some great investments missing from there.

Disclosure: YC founder and fan of Sam's work as CEO

> I'm sure he is a smart, hard working and a nice bloke. But he is not a genius.

I'd extend this observation to 99% of founders and CEOs.

>baffled why Sam Altman is held in such high regard

I don't know him personally but Paul Graham does and thinks him exceptional so in absence of other info I'll trust take his word - http://paulgraham.com/5founders.html

Altman became president of the YC partnership, with a newly created board of overseeers. Nowhere near to a CEO that makes all the decisions by himself.

What if you were made CEO of Apple tomorrow? It's already well established and successful, so there is hardly any risk involved there?

Yes, there is.

https://steveblank.com/2016/10/24/why-tim-cook-is-steve-ball...

Doesn't your assumption (leading YC is hard) rise the question why he got that job even more, if we assume he performed average in his startup and lost investors money?