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Comment by pg | Hacker News Reader

Actually you should expect to find them disproportionately often at YC, because our structure (investing a small amount in a lot of startups) makes it in our interest to take the biggest risks.

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I'm playing devil's advocate here, but don't you think you're a bit biased? :-)

I mean, I bet James Gosling feels that Java is a disproportionately better programming language.

That would be true if your investing structure were the only variable. I think Aloisius is talking about the YC culture. You have said that the idea doesn't matter nearly as much as the personalities of the founders. The implication is that founders are laborers with special skills who can produce a valuable commodity: start-ups.

As far as I can tell the founders' personalities are about the same as in the Valley generally. If there's a difference imparted by YC, it's that they're more confident. But confidence usually makes people more willing to take risks, not less.

Not always. I know many people whose "confidence" was predicated on success -- such as being accepted to Harvard, Y Combinator, medical school, whatever. As a result they felt compelled to be successful -- and ended up doing things like becoming a lawyer or selling their company for $1 million because they were too afraid of being "failures."

For the startups to be less of a commodity, perhaps you could look for some sort of unique perspective on the world that founders should have. It seems Google founders had a lot of that. This may not help with the returns though; maybe more money are there to be made from commodity startups than truly disruptive ones.

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