I love YC, obviously. But does anyone with more literary prowess than me have any insight into why they chose to formulate their sentences so weirdly in this post?
It's possible that it was written by committee, (i.e. everyone editing a Google doc), which often leads to this kind of writing.
Alternatively, maybe they just didn't want it to sound too much like PG's writing style.
Still, phrases like "Y Combinator’s goal is to cause there to be more startups, by helping founders to start them." don't exactly flow.
Nor does this:
"Y Combinator represents the union of two ideas that had not previously been combined: the application of mass production techniques to startup funding."
"Y Combinator represents the union of two ideas that had not previously been combined: the application of mass production techniques [and] startup funding."
Which was pretty much my point.