I’m not sure how it would benefit them to “lie” about their criteria, unless they were secretly racist or something (clearly not the case). If anything they would want to encourage the kind of founders they actually accept, to make the process more efficient.

I’m sure the process isn’t entirely fair, since picking winners at such an early stage is incredibly hard and they have so little time for each candidate, but I’m also sure that they _try_ to be as fair as possible.

And I write this as someone that has been rejected about half a dozen times...