[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.