[exogeny]

I don't know Aaron at all, but I'm curious about what kind of bonafides you must have to be a Partner at YC. Do they mean partner in the financial sense (ie: he bought into it) or in an operational sense? If it's the latter, at first glance there's a bit of strange optics to have someone in that role whose only notable experience to my knowledge in the startup world ended in failure.

[zapita]

When your job is to help startups, your experience of failure is much more valuable than your experience of success, because it’s much easier to learn from your mistakes.

In any case, YC partners quickly accumulate enormous experience from the failures of all the startups they’re helping. I bet Aaron has personally seen hundreds of startups fail, and has learned from every single failure in order to better help his next batch of startups. That experience probably eclipses whatever else he did before YC.

To me that’s YC’s biggest competitive advantage: they aggregate the learning experience of thousands of startup failures, and use it to keep their success rate above market.

[lawnchair_larry]

Sam Altman is the President of Y Combinator, and that was roughly his experience as well. YC does not consider having a billion dollar exit to be a requirement for advising and picking billion dollar startups. Neither do most VCs I’d guess.

In some ways it may be counterintuitive, but in others it makes sense. A successful founder only has a single anecdote. Someone running an incubator has something much closer to empirical data. You can only run 1 experiment at a time, while they can have hundreds or thousands.

Also, you don’t necessarily need talent executing in a specific domain in order to recognize it in others.

[mi100hael]

Partner at a VC fund generally means you have a proven track record picking winning deals or bringing on investors and have been given a seat at the adult table by the other existing partners. Usually it involves putting up some of your own money so you have skin in the game. Doesn't necessarily require startup success of your own.