[brogrammernot]

Can you elaborate?

Most companies I’ve seen go through YC do not have any sort of revenue stream, nor a business plan or any other baselines metrics you could evaluate on a merit basis.

The only factors I can see them evaluating on are subjective in nature, not objective merit based items.

Nothing wrong with that, YC has produced some fantastic companies but just doesn’t seem to be a meritocratic process.

[BurningFrog]

I'm surprised to hear people think there is some conflict between being subjective and being meritocratic.

By that standard there is no meritocratic way choose the best musician, actor, chef.

And maybe that's how some people use the word. But to me it just means that you choose people based on their work, not on who they are or who they know.

Whether you evaluate the work subjectively or objectively is a whole separate matter to me.

[Judgmentality]

I have to digress a bit initially to answer this...

I think one of the most frustrating things for inexperienced founders is not understanding why investors say no, because founders believe so strongly in their vision it is hard for them to understand why someone might not be persuaded by their pitch and investors just want to make more money, right?

But ultimately the decision to invest, at least at the seed stage, is largely emotional. It's a question of feeling good about the team, the idea, and believing it will gain traction. Nobody has product-market fit at this point, so you have to use incredibly limited information to make a decision.

YC excels at this stage. They only have 10 minutes of face time to make a decision, so they're using that time to try to evaluate you and your company as quickly as possible. There is no magic rubrik for this decision, they just try to assess the founders and their idea and whether or not they think it will work.

When I say they're meritocratic, I don't mean there is some single metric you can use to compare all companies to make a perfectly rational decision. What I mean is they evaluate everyone based on that 10 minute conversation, not on their pedigree.

FWIW, I applied to YC and was accepted without knowing anybody. Maybe I just like to believe the process is meritocratic and I'm special.