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Part of the reason that I initially karma whored was because I was trying to get a bit of name recognition for when I finally applied to YC. I applied this past fall. Didn't even get an interview, so one of my big motivations for being as active on the site was gone.

In hindsight, I'm glad I didn't get in. It's given me a lot of perspective. I've thought a _lot about the incubation process. I've had thousands of conversations about startups and investors, and the incubator process at Hackers & Founders events over the years. I've also thought a _ton_ about why the demand to get into YC is so high.

My current answer is that the market for early stage capital is extremely inefficient, even in Silicon Valley. There are hundreds if not thousands of early startups here, who have _no idea what investors are looking for. They have no idea how to approach an investor. They have no idea what investors are worth talking to at what stages, etc... And, because that market is so inefficient, there is an extremely high demand for intermediaries like YC, Angel Pad, Tech Stars, IO Ventures, StartX, etc... that can show them the ropes.

But, these intermediaries don't really fix the problem. They are middle men, and they charge a premium in terms of equity stakes to be middle men.

For investors, the incubators do fix the filtering problem, and that's certainly worth a great deal to them. For the startups, a lot of them wouldn't get their start if it weren't for the incubators. But, if the market was more transparent and efficient, there would be less of a need for intermediaries and middle men.

So, we're going to try to fix these problems in the startup market at Hackers & Founders. It's a Quixotic task. But, I think we have a decent shot of being able to fix some of these long standing problems in Silicon Valley and help fix some of these problems globally.

So, this past summer, we boot strapped an incubator though Hackers & Founders, to try and see if we could "fix" some of these problems. And, it worked. The six companies that we had weekly dinners with have all raised a total of $1.5M. And, 3 of the 6 are still heavily fund raising right now. And, I'm still working as a nurse.

We're not going to make a lot of money at this. We're certainly not interested in becoming investors. We'll ask for an advisory stake, however. The chance to hack Silcon Valley is just a little bit too cool a hack to let pass by, however.

I'm done with YC. I still have a lot of friends who are YC companies, and I certainly have a lot of friends here.

So, now, when I come to post, it's to see what my friends are talking about, and maybe chat a little. I'm still picking up karma because of brand recognition, I think. But, I really stopped caring about how high my karma score was about a year ago.