1. "Y Combinator invests 5k + 5k per founder in exchange for 6-10% equity."
Should be 11k + 3k per founder in exchange for 2-10% (but almost always 7%).
2. "According to PG, every partner reads every app over a period of about 10 days."
The partners no longer read every application. Alumni reviewers do a first pass. Better to start from the fact that a partner reading applications will read 70-100 per day, and do the math based on that.
3. "Oh god yes, we think of ourselves as just utterly terrible at picking these terms."
The "terms" must be some kind of transcription error. Teams?
4. "They truly would love to have every single company they fund be a "winner" even if there weren’t as many mega companies."
This is the exact opposite of what we think. We're looking for outliers. That's why we like to fund crazy ideas. There's nothing we like better than funding an idea that has a small chance of succeeding, but will be huge if it does.
Of course, once we accept a startup, we want it to succeed. But that is a separate question.
5. "The unofficial YC slogan is "Make something people want.""
That's the official slogan. (The unofficial one is "Never a dull moment," referring to the fact that with so many startups there is always something extreme happening on any given day.)
6. "My thoughts on the demo are actually that it doesn’t play a major role in YC’s decision."
The demo can matter a lot. It depends on the type of startup. If you're in a situation where you ought to have something to show for your work so far, it's bad not to. And no matter what your situation, it helps greatly if you have a great demo.
7. "Make sure you try your hardest to get some recommendations."
Actually it would be better to expend that effort on your company or the application. Don't spend a lot of time spamming YC alumni trying to collect recommendations. They don't carry any weight with us unless they are very strong. We can tell the difference between a recommendation that's being made for our sake (because the alum thinks it would damaging for us to overlook the application), and one that's being made for the sake of the applicant (e.g. because the alum is benevolent and they begged him to recommend them).
8. "PG has started to re-imagine YC as an institution."
It would be more accurate to say that I've started to talk openly about such things. The imagining started surprisingly early.