I was actually thinking the other day. What would happen if Instagram applied for YC ? (May be they even did :)) Some of the characteristics don't look so good. Shall we see….

- A single founder…at least to begin with (they had a 80/20 split because Kevin apparently committed earlier) http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/11/business/la-fi-insta... - A non-technical founder: http://thenextweb.com/2012/04/10/instagrams-ceo-had-no-forma... - And the idea is for an app to share pictures in 2010. Even Facebook and Twitter had a really good mobile app by then.

I say their chances did not look very good. That said, they probably would have benefited much from being in YC.