Yeah, if I were to describe it more generally, I would say they self-select for techno-optimists. As investors, YC often espouses judging startup’s potential by considering how successful the startup could be if everything goes right, and then working backwards from there to see if it could be possible. I’m not sure if pg has a historic reference that he has a commitment to, since he was a startup founder himself he just may be projecting his personality to the startup founders he’s assessing, but I do think he’s more concerned with “whether the startup has accomplished something impressive despite the odds” and less about how they accomplished it.

They filter for red flags that would indicate a potential for failure for the startup. So if a “lack of morals” has no bearing on a startup’s success, then they don’t bother creating a filter that eliminates that. Nerds often prefer building things instead of dealing with people and often take things at face value instead of suspecting intrigue, and that sometimes makes them susceptible to manipulation. PG has admitted that he himself is bad at noticing certain personality or character flaws and that’s why Jessica was the adult in the room. But Jessica was probably observing the founders to see if there was good co-founder dynamic and other aspects that would affect startup success rather than trying to decipher their moral character. After all, there is no hippocratic oath in the tech sector.