[akharris]

We're nearly always worried that we're past our prime, which is part of what drives us to try new things.

Rather than become more risk averse, I've actually seen us take increasingly large risks in the five years since I've joined. A few examples: investing in a greater number of sectors, investing in new markets, investing in different stages, advising thousands of companies (startup school), challenging the norms of fundraising (series A program)...The list keeps going.

[Alex3917]

Taking on increasingly risky projects can be a sign of risk aversion though. E.g. working on (or funding) moon shot projects can be a way to avoid having to hold yourself accountable if the project fails, whereas it's much harder to put all your eggs in one basket behind a strategy that should actually succeed if well executed.

I'm not saying YC is guilty of this generally, but I do see it sometimes. E.g. I think pursuing the artificial kidney thing is kind of a cop out compared to getting states to change their laws so that people are opted into organ donation by default, since if the former fails you can just say it was because the technology isn't here yet whereas with the latter it concretely shows that you just weren't able to get it done.

[shafyy]

More people involved almost always leads to less risk taken within an organization. Of course, "risk" is hard to back up with data in the short-term in this instance.

However, number of sectors, number of companies and challenging the norms of fundraising is not what I mean by risk. I meant rather investing in companies where 99.99% of all other VCs would pass. And I'm not saying that you're NOT doing that, I'm just saying that theoratically that could become an issue and I'm worried about that (because I want YC to be successful!)

Or, to put it in another way: It's not clear to me if in YC's case bigger = better. Maybe there's an optimum somewhere?