[nwenzel]

middleout: your hypothesis is that YC is elitist. Or you have to have PMF (evidence that what you’re doing is working), 2nd time founder (evidence that you have succeeded in the past), or deep subject matter expertise.

Traction, Prior Success, or evidence of subject matter expertise. Those sound like pretty good criteria to me. But, YC is actually looking for people who are “sufficiently determined”. Those three things are just evidence of determination.

As for the elitist case. I have no idea other than to say it seems false using a sample size of one (me) and a sample size of one batch (summer 2013).

[middleout]

i agree wholeheartedly that PMF, prior exit and deep industry/technical knowledge are pretty obvious things to look for when you're trying to make money as a venture investor.

let me try another way. let's say YC gets 20K applications. let's say 1K (using round numbers) fall into the above categories (PMF et al), and 19K do not.

of the 19k that do not, my guess is that of the ones (ie. the very, very lucky few of the 19K) that do actually get into YC, a high (statistically significant) proportion of those founders were very well connected. that's all i'm saying.

as for your last point, i think we can both agree that we're both just guessing, there's no real #s or transparency to prove or disprove, so maybe we can just agree to disagree.

edit: maybe "elitist" was the wrong word to use. OTOH, YC is widely considered the "harvard of accelerators". while that has many connotations, it would be silly to say that harvard and elitism are not associated