[awwstn]

PG points out regularly that there is no way of predicting whether a startup will succeed. So, I'd guess that much of what they do is try to filter out companies that are likely to not succeed.

If YC has nailed down the process, then only formidable teams would make it to the interview, and then the interview would serve to simply make sure the dynamic and attitude of the team is not such that they'd be likely to not succeed (sorry for the double negative, but I think the inverse would have a different meaning). It seems reasonable that after hundreds of these interviews, YC partners would be able to spot those dynamics in minutes.

[yohanatan]

You could say 'fail' instead of 'not succeed'.

[jacalata]

Well, they're really trying to filter out companies which won't sell for millions. I don't think that everything below that is failure. Perhaps he should have gone with "won't wildly succeed"?