Ron Conway steps back as Y Combinator cuts team funding

Does it strike anyone else as odd that the context for this discussion revolves solely around the funding they're given, and that's the only barometer in this discussion?<p>While I get that it's not the reason being given, it's hard not to infer that this pullback in funding is in some way related to the real-world success rate of recent YC companies.

November 26 - see the full thread of comments on reduction of team funding and rationale behind it here: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4861867" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4861867</a>

Is there a list of failed/doomed YC startups? Maybe with some analysis?

It seems insane to cut the best investor out of the group - even if you want to reduce the total investment you still want the best people.

Makes sense -- that extra $70K or so probably isn't the deciding factor in seeing whether someone has a validated idea and product. Ron Conway probably stepped back in part because now EVERY company is a Ron Conway-backed company and that his backing doesn't have the same cachet as before.

How is YC doing financially?

Some investors have more of a long-term perspective than others. Always the scary part of investing in early-stage startups has been the need to fund a lot of losers to cast a wide enough net to find the occasional winner. The main YC team will keep refining its procedures for searching out winners who haven't won yet, while screening out losers who won't win even with a YC investment, but that will always be an inexact art.