YC could have a chatbot of its own to interview the founder chatbots. What the YC chatbot will/may say would be kept a secret.
Are they able to solve simple logistics problems: How do they deal with missed trains or planes? how do they deal with lack of seats when we go to eat at a busy restaurant? how do they cope with rain, snow, excessive traffic, or crowds if we need to hail a cab? How do they treat bar and waitstaff? how about hotel staff? Are they able to book and change rooms in a sold-out hotel? How fussy are they about limited options for a late night meal? lack of internet? flat tire? a massive brawl nearby? road closures? power outages?
If you want to test someone's will to survive, in this day and age, put them in the stadium part of town immediately after the big game and watch them fetch for themselves and compete for food and transportation, not to mention personal space, with hordes of drunken and volatile masses.
The ones who whine, wince, or the least bit annoyed or confused should be dropped like dead weight.
[Edit: s/smirk/wince]
That's one right out of my playbook too!
I think it is a major indicator of how people are put together, if they're not treating people that are in a temporary position of having to serve them in a decent way then that speaks volumes about their mentality.
Neat to see that as a more widespread thing.
There is a good chance you'll end up dropping the likes of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. In fact, the only kinds that might be able to make past your test may be emotionless robotic types.
Anyone who is not at least a bit annoyed in those circumstances is not human.
Showing emotion is quite ok, abusing people is not.
And if that would filter out Steve Jobs or Bill Gates is an open question, I don't know if they would be rude, abusive or simply not nice in such situations.
the gp basically said you can't.
Entitlement.
If you feel entitled to stuff then all the problems in the world are caused by and supposed to be solved by others.
If you have a 'get up & go' attitude then there is not much that will faze you, after all, you trust in your own competence and judgment to solve things.
There is a certain 'complaint' culture, where everybody is just whining about stuff all-day-long. It really can get on your nerves sometimes. So, you complain. Fine, now what are you going to do to fix it. And if the answer is nothing then stop complaining.
It's very scary how pervasive this is in society.
I believe that position is closer to mine than the OP's.
He is saying that any bit of emotion is bad and a dealbreaker.
And I fully concur with that. When faced with adversary circumstances you can choose to be active and constructive (and polite to boot), or you can be inactive and negative (complaining, whining, 'why doesn't anybody do something' and so on).
Just watch your friends the next time your group gathering is inconvenience by a forced change in plans, and watch out for the first person who becomes angry or yells out "oh great!", etc.
It's just a guideline though, not a dogma.
My opinion is that people who are more drastically affected by outside circumstances than the rest of their group, and who have their own private way of suffering, unshared with the rest of the unit, those people don't tend to be team-players and rarely volunteer leadership or take responsibility.
When the bus breaks down and everyone is about to miss their appointment, there is no sense in being the biggest cry baby. Lament is acceptable, but the person who gets out of the bus first and runs for a cab is the real winner. _IMO_.
This would greatly disadvantage those of us who are smarter than the current limits of AI.
HN is as far as I know not recruiting chat bot programmers (though plenty of the YC alumni and current partners could certainly do this), they're recruiting people that are on the verge of starting or have already started a company.
To have those people do all kinds of 'make work' because it is 'fun' would put YC on the map as a frivolous party, not a serious one.
Think about it, if you had to go and interview with a VC and they told you 'you have to go and write this chatbot first or we won't hear your application', at the 'seed' level the overhead of doing that (especially one for each founder!) would be enormous compared to the size of the investment.
I think this is a bad idea.
(Just give me credit if you go do it!)
Chatbots usually have some sort of factpack that allow them to parrot out responses. Whatever facts you'd want in the factpack would just be the responses to the application questions.
I think it's an really interesting idea actually, but in the general sense of building and training an online agent that could 'stand in' for you in a conversation. I don't see how it solves any problem with the YC application process.
Bot performance would show how much thought they have given to the whole matter as well as some indication of their technical proficiency.
Would it require a lot of effort? Sure, but that effort can be amortized across future bot interviews, not just with YC.
To those who are taking it seriously: you will not be successful with YC until you get a better grasp of reality.