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Comment by trustfundbaby | Hacker News Reader

I think this is awful .... I'm sorry, you'll have to excuse me, I'm a bit of a romantic when it comes to startups and innovation.

Sure, people who come up with an idea to do a start up usually change it midstream, but they actually come up with one and set out to achieve it. If you can't even think of something to work on, then I don't think people should be falling over themselves to give you money to just come up with something just because you're 'smart' ... it just seems to commoditize and cheapen the process in my opinion. Plus if it doesn't work out, now they have the easy out ... "It wasn't even my idea".

Yes, I know the founder of Yelp got handed $1 million to come up with something and they got Yelp ...

Yes, I know I haven't done this day-in day-out for years like you guys have ...

but it still upsets me. maybe I just need to give it 5 minutes.

I'll sit down now.

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Think of how many people YC has seen flow through. Successes, failures, one's they can't predict yet. There are probably certain patterns and traits in the good ones. They've also seen what types of idea's work best with certain types of people.

YC is directly integrated into the heartbeat of Silicon Valley, gaining more insight into where the puck is going to be, far better than any outsider. If they can match traits of a group/person to an idea only they have the privilege to imagine, you might have a winning combination.

The fact that people are complaining about this likely means it's a good idea, or should at least be tested. Occasionally throwing a monkey wrench into the machine is always good practice.

Colleges do this already by accepting smart students who don't know what to major in yet. Who cares if it takes them some time to figure it out? They're smart! They'll get it!

> Colleges do this already by accepting smart students who don't know what to major in yet.

Colleges do this to get their tuition money, not out of the goodness of their hearts. Who cares if they don't know? Society standards dictate most of them will stick it out and pay for four years of something.

That assumes that the most important thing to a college is present earnings and not potential future earnings. Colleges regularly compete for top students (at a loss via scholarships) in order to pump up their stats and increase their prestige (which comes largely from what graduates do long after leaving school) both of which are intended to increase future earnings. And that is only considering universities from the cynical, profit-driven perspective.

Let's just say I am a lot less idealistic about colleges than you appear to be.

The top students who will become prestigious alumni are by and large not the same students who don't know what they want to major in yet. For every Steve Jobs-like outlier you have a ton of executives, accountants, doctors, and engineers who know that's what they want to do. The major-less students will generally either pay for four years of psychology or be successful for unrelated reasons (legacy status and family connections, the occasional dumb luck).

If YC thinks trying to pick out the outliers, the lucky, and the connected from their application pool is worth the trial, power to them.

Most staff who work in admissions at most colleges do not care in the slightest about tuition money.

Perhaps, but people who set the colleges' enrollment targets certainly do.

My gut feeling is strong and very similar to yours. But, I have learned that when something bothers me this much it usually it means I'm not looking at it correctly.

I don't know what happens when you take smart people who are confident they can solve problems and give them problems.

Maybe they can actually solve them, maybe they can't, I have no idea, but I look forward to watching it and seeing what happens.

For me the important thing is caring about what you're doing, not that it was your idea. Certainly that's my experience working in a startup-esque non-startup.

I know YC wouldn't ever say "right, here's your new business plan", and I suspect the aim here is to be able to find ideas that these idealess-founders will be passionate about.

Looks more (not completely) like they're looking for a CEO and not a founder.

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