<i>None of Y Combinators competitors have anything like that to offer new entrepreneurs.</i><p>Y Combinator competitors would be foolish to try to compete on the money axis anyway - the cash has always been minimally important. They would do much better by identifying and focusing on YC's actual weaknesses.
So 60+ out of how many?<p>I must admit. I cant wait to hear the types of startups that made the cut this time. It would be incredible to know (or scary as hell) to find out if any of them are in essence, similar to what we want to do (or are in the process of doing).<p>YC has made it possible for some really cool technologies come to the marketplace. And YC has inspired many like me to get off our collective asses to chase our dreams. Even if what I am currently building does not amount to a whole lot, the essays of PG has sure inspired me and will in turn inspire a lot many more who I will be sure to recommend it to.
The more popular and powerful YC becomes, the more it becomes evident that there's an emerging niche in the market for facilitator-type enterprises doing what YC does. Something akin to <i>mentorprising</i>; PG et al are <i>mentorprisers</i> of<p>I guess this is to be expected as geek culture becomes more mainstream.
Most everyone trying to get accepted by YC is familiar with PG, his writings, and the YC partners experience regarding startups. It's a primary reason many apply.<p>Respect that PG and the other founders know how to scale the program and handle the workload. They have all the experience of running YC, while each of us has none.<p>They would be the first to limit their startup count if that needed to happen.
is this going to suffer from the same problems as increased class sizes? less personal mentoring, for example?<p>i guess you can argue that it increases the pool of connections, but that's a lower quality (unproved) pool than contacts with established players, no?
I don't know if this data is available, but I'd be interested to see what percentage of this class was incorporated before applying, and what percentage got incorporated as part of the process.<p>Also interesting would be what percentage of this class include repeat YC founders.
Anyone know what the chances of them taking someone who applied late might be? We just heard about Y Combinator and applied a couple days ago. Their information is vague on this only saying that chances are very slim. Probably more slim now that they are taking 60 off the top.