[educar]

This is silly. Sad to see that startups are being thought as some sort of game/entertainment. Nobody who is serious about building a company needs to actually go through all this.

I cannot imagine YC's own employees will go through this process should they start a company of their own. I thought the previous experiment was borderline amusement but this has totally crossed the line.

Has YC somehow convinced itself that it's all a lottery and there is no point trying to evaluate start ups using normal methods?

[maxwin]

I have tried using snapchat 3 times and found it frustrating to use. I have no friends using it. Because of this post, I gave it another try and followed Justin Khan and other tech entrepreneurs. I must say I finally know a bit about why it is such a big deal. I spent like an hour during the past 7 hours watching other people's stories. It is kind of addictive. I love Justin's snapstorm on founder burnout and how to avoid it. It feels very personal and casual. Justin, please ignore the negativities and keep being awesome.

[sheehantoufiq]

Snapchat got social vlogging right.

The amount of friction a user goes through to start documenting their life is extremely low, and since the stories get deleted there's no real commitment to be an active vlogger. It's easy to see why Justin is so active on it.

It's a powerful platform that an entire generation uses, and it seems like the applicants will still go through formal interviews. So it's simply a way to bring attention to YC.

Would a YouTube video pitch 10 years ago be silly?

Would applying over email in 1995 be silly?

Maybe back then, but think about how applying to incubators is done now.

Maybe Snapchat will never reach the level of popularity of either of those, but it never hurts to experiment, because it's experimentation that turned YC into one of the top incubators.

[educar]

First you use a powerful phrase like 'documenting their life' and then you say 'stories get deleted'.

Snapcat is about entertainment and connection and not about documenting your life. Let's call it as what it is.

[bennesvig]

It's about capturing/documenting the moment.

[rmason]

I just urged a local startup here to apply. Told her that I'd bet the prevailing attitude on HN would be that it was a joke. Fewer applicants gives her a much better chance to be noticed.

I'm way older than Snapchat's target demographic but I love it. Few people from the startup world on there but the quality of the advice is high.