[burcs]

This mindset is tiresome, especially seeing it on Hacker News...

I literally went to the cheapest state school in rural Pennsylvania and still was accepted into YC. My co-founder didn't even finish college, at some point I think people just want to make excuses.

Also — I don't understand your second point. It's an accelerator. Capital is part and parcel when it comes to accelerating.

[ldjkfkdsjnv]

I live in NYC and know a ton of founders. its just the facts. people certainly get funded outside the normal background, but probably 70% of early stage funding goes to the same types of people

[thruway516]

It's a fairly safe bet if you're trying to minimize your risk as much as possible. Sure it lacks imagination and you probably miss out on the true outliers but most Vcs are really conservative risk averse investors no matter what they say.

[pfannkuchen]

Fancy schools are just a way to get pre-vetted candidates.

If you aren’t pre-vetted, it doesn’t mean you’re worse, it just means vetting you is more work and has more risk.

[neilv]

Fancy schools might indeed, coincidentally, vet founders for the same things these particular investors are looking for.

For example, wealthy family safety net for extended risk-taking, connections for finding customers and partners and investors, confidence of founders in asserting will over hires, and appealing to class-based beliefs of other investors.

But since most of us aren't investors, this isn't to say that fancy schools vet for, say, hires.

While I generally like and respect the people I've known who happened to attend fancy schools, I've learned not to pay much attention to what schools someone attended.

[calmbonsai]

What year was your class?

Just because it’s tiresome doesn’t make it untrue in this “era”.

This is not a bag on YC, but yesteryear’s “web store”, begot “social”, begot “blockchain”, begot “ai” and today’s private markets are more conservative for Seed and A rounds.