[wattle_park]

Well..it was a not a balanced article. What is YC? An accelerators, incubators or VC? I believe YC has changed since 2005. It started as an incubator, then gradually becoming an accelerator with Dropbox and AirBnB successes. And to scale their business fast, it would make sense to accept companies with traction.

The reason they received huge numbers of applicants because their criteria was wide and IMHO misleading.

The originals partners were brilliant founders. They were not young (drop out or out of college) founders. They had 'life' experiences. So they were very nurturing and compassionate and patient. They helped young smart founders to build companies and many become successful companies. With the current goals of scaling fast, and many new partners YC has diluted its success recipe. It's not about 'making what people want' anymore. It's about making what 20 something year old who live in the valley want.

Jessica Livingstone's book 'Founders at Work' contains many different types of founders. And not many of them were fresh out of college or college drop outs.

YC has become a big company, and along the way YC has contributed to build Silicon Valley as the center for technology. However, it needs to have big companies responsibilities as well.