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Comment by redbell | Hacker News Reader

Well, I have to confess I was misled by the title! I was under the impression that the article was about YC, but it turned out to be about mathematics. Ironically, the below quote is still relevant to YC, I believe:

> 8. Applications of the Y combinator

> You might be wondering what makes the Y combinator so special.

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The name Y Combinator is a metaphor: startup growth is "recursive" in a sense and Y Combinator builds such "recursive" companies out of a non-recursive input (the founders themselves)

Also Paul Graham is a Lisp nerd

(Note, I tried to find an authoritative source on how the name was chosen - the only thing I found was https://paulgraham.com/ycstart.html that lists when, but not how the name came to be; but I think this metaphor is somewhat obvious)

To me, the "combinator" part is quite obviously an earcorn pun on "incubator".

  > Well, I have to confess I was misled by the title! I was under the impression that the article was about YC, but it turned out to be about mathematics.

What gave it away for me was the define article "the". The "the" would have been absent had the article been about the company.

That was very difficult to write while avoiding puns!

You are not alone mate :p

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