[pg]

The two ideas you seem to believe are contradictory, that it's easier than ever to get funded, and that getting funding is tough, are not in fact contradictory. Both are true. It's hard to get funded, but it's easier now than it has ever been in the past.

It's also not true that it's an order of magnitude harder to get funded by YC than to get into Harvard College. Our acceptance rate is usually around 3% and Harvard's is currently 7%, so the difference is closer to 2x.

The biggest mistake though is the implicit one that it's ideas that get funded. At the seed stage, it's people that get funded, not ideas.

[cperciva]

At the seed stage, it's people that get funded, not ideas.

To what extent do ideas influence your judgement of people? It seems to me that -- for all that you're funding people, not ideas -- it would be very hard to avoid saying "what sort of idiots came up with this idea?" at times. (The opposite, namely forming a positive impression of people based on their having had a brilliant idea, seems also possible but likely far less common.)

[pg]

You're right. We care about the idea as much for what it tells us about the people as for its own sake.