[toomuchtodo]

It’s to pull eyeballs for jobs at YC portfolio companies and to attempt to convince founders to apply to batches. It is their marketing and talent sourcing. It is, arguably, the most valuable contributor of forward looking potential returns (considering most VC investment decisions are statistics and gambling).

[duxup]

I'm always skeptical about "eyeballs" type arguments. If we were talking about millions of people for an advert sure, but most folks here aren't YC participants / won't be and heck most talk about joining a startup as an IC on here is NOT POSITIVE ;)

[johnnyanmac]

It's the car commercial dilemma. No one is going to spend 30,60,100k on a whim because a commercial told them too. But the long term idea is to implant that idea of wanting X brand once you are in the market for a car. You can't know what you don't know.

But such effects need to be measured over years, not weeks. So a company won't know until it's too late.

[dragonwriter]

> most talk about joining a startup as an IC on here is NOT POSITIVE

I think to the personality type most sought after for startup jobs, the discussion here is net encouraging.

Being discouraging to others is a side benefit. (Note that I am not in the group to whom it is encouraging.)