Thanks.

"things useful in a startup" does seem like misleading advice. Because people applying don't yet know what's useful. So it's obvious to me that having won an Olympic medal is super useful, but it's probably not obvious to the applicant. Hmm, and "useful" is probably not quite the right word here ... I'll try to cover this more in emails.

You comment above rates 6.5. Your writing style is very unusual though. It remains easy to understand despite being somewhat complex linguistically. 6 is about the maximum I can usually understand in a single pass. And after reading a bunch of applications my abilities degenerate. Best direct response copywriters consistently rate at 4.