Right on. The proposal had to be set up to prevent such obvious abuse.

One thought was admissions rates, since folks seemed impressed by the soundbite that "YC had a lower admissions rate than Harvard," even leaving aside self-selection biases in the applicant pool.

Another is a startup community-run Self Regulatory Organization (SRO) that would get into the ranking and evaluating business a la Mattermark, with official certification/recognition by the government.