[sfraise]

Michael how much of that early magic is lost now with PG not actively involved, with the bigger batches and the more industrialized machine?

Don't get me wrong, what YC has become is pretty amazing but boy what I wouldn't give to have been part of one of those first few batches or especially that first one with Aaron Swartz.

[mwseibel]

I talk about this specifically in my post... Having done YC in 2007, 2012, and helping to run it now. I think today YC founders are given many more tools and much more money to succeed.

[sfraise]

Sure, no doubt today's founders are much better equipped for success no arguing that.

I guess I meant just from a pure experience perspective.

[sctb]

I think today's founders care about being equipped for success. The Y combinator in the lambda calculus is about what it enables you express, not itself.

[sfraise]

I'm a "today's founder" (although I will admit I'm pretty old) but the history of PG, YC & the people that were in those first few batches I find incredibly interesting. In fact I find the whole evolution of this industry as a whole in Silicon Valley interesting & this is just the next evolution of that.

Sure, our focus is all about how to grow faster & I didn't mean to imply that today's YC is worse than it was when it started as it relates to achieving a founders actual goals, I didn't mean that at all.

My question to Michael was just based on this aspect of his post: "For me, there were two amazing things in the early days of YC that are different today. First, in 2007, batches were much smaller so it was easier to meet all of your batchmates. Today, you have to work harder to meet and become friends with all the talented people in your batch. We put companies into groups of about 30-40 in order to replicate the feeling of the past. Second, getting to work directly with PG was special."

From strictly an experience aspect since Michael is uniquely qualified to give a perspective on being a part of both then and now there had to be a certain magic in that 2007 batch that would be pretty tough to recreate today, or maybe not I guess, I don't know, it's why I asked.