Paul Graham Says Y Combinator Is Pickier Than Ever, ‘Hardly Any’ Bad Startups

<i>“There are hardly any startups in this batch that are bad,” Graham said.</i><p>I believe one of two things about this statement, neither of which is what pg likely meant by it:<p>1. YC has bad startups it just hasn't recognized yet.<p>2. YC has an entirely mediocre batch of startups due to not taking any risks on "bad" startups.

Is this really the right approach? I remember PG writing that if YC were truly rational they should have a <i>bigger</i> proportion of failures (because they should be taking much "riskier" ideas, because of the power-law distribution of outcomes).

Here's hoping pg writes an essay on what YC thinks the "predictors of failure" are. I'm sure some applicants for S13 are probably panicking, having optimized their application for the "old" version of the YC selection process. I'm not too worried, as we're exceptionally strong on the one data point he's provided.

The linked article (and title) says:<p>&#62; <i>“There are hardly any startups in this batch that are bad,” Graham said.</i><p>But the following [1] says:<p>&#62; <i>Y Combinator founder Paul Graham said this he feels like the contracted size of this class means that there are essentially no weak startups in the bunch</i><p>There's a huge difference between "hardly any bad startups" and "essentially no weak startups" so it seems someone at techcrunch is misquoting pg.<p><a href="http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/26/y-combinator-winter-2013-demo-day-batch-1/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/26/y-combinator-winter-2013-de...</a>

And if there <i>is</i> a bad startup -- like one that looks like it's going to run away with customers' money (or at least make them panic about it) -- don't worry, they just clip out any mentions of the YC association.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5428449" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5428449</a>

"He [pg] said that this time around, YC looked at 'predictors of failure,' not just 'predictors of success.' For example, he said that in the past YC might have chosen a company that had great founders (a predictor of success), but this time it might have filtered that same company out because those founders, while great individually, all hate each other (a predictor of failure)."<p>The given example implies that YC has chosen founders who don't like each other in the past. Seems remarkably odd and hard to believe IMO. It may have meant to say that the founders seemed LIKELY TO hate each other eventually but if they even disliked each other at the interview, I can't imagine the YC partners being ok with this.

Why the big fuss about saying some startups are "bad"? I'm sure some startups are bad. There's certainly a possibility that some bad startups looked good and made it through the screening process. Other accepted bad startups may have been risky bets that didn't payoff.<p>I think at least a few people have a problem with the directness and harshness of the statement. But if I was one of those bad startups, I'd appreciate the candor and directness. That would be far preferable to someone being "nice" and allowing me to continue down the wrong path.<p>Being "nice" isn't really that nice at all.

This is opposed to last sessions where Paul Graham said lots of the startups that just started and he had subsequently just allowed into his program were bad?

YC Has ONLY bad startups if Demo day is any sort of barometer. Some will be "successful" for the investors. Ridiculous garbage.

So what does he mean by "bad startup" anyway?<p>Is that a startup that supposedly will hardly succeed?

Ah, so the present Silicon Valley bubble is about to pop.

Reminds me of the slogan for the strip club Déjà Vu:<p>"1000's of Beautiful Girls and 3 Ugly Ones"