[willholloway]

What I got from reading Paul Graham's own writing on the genesis of YC, was that his key insight was that VC's should be funding more companies, and earlier, and giving founder's much more control.

The other key innovation was funding in batches, in classes. This created a close-knit ad hoc community with shared goals, and one in which teams whose ideas were not finding traction could join teams whose ideas were.

[Danihan]

Paul Graham's own writing and advice is not really followed by YC though.

As an easy example, look at his recent post about naming your startup, versus the names of the companies allowed through in a recent round of seed funding.

http://www.paulgraham.com/name.html

https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/22/y-combinator-demo-day-summ...

[erikpukinskis]

Are the batches really that tight still? Seems nice just as a way to structure the curriculum, but is it more than that?