[swartkrans]

> However, Y-combinator's partners in particular have a habit of advertising "we don't care as much about your idea as about your team because the idea usually gets overhauled drastically anyway".

This is not true for any ycombinator startup I have worked at. The idea has always been key, but the team is also very important.

[norseboar]

That certainly used to be an attitude Y Combinator had (http://old.ycombinator.com/noidea.html), although it sounds like that didn't work out. Paul Graham's essays also perennially mention that the people are far more important than the ideas ("Another sign of how little the initial idea is worth is the number of startups that change their plan en route.", "What matters is not ideas, but the people who have them. Good people can fix bad ideas, but good ideas can't save bad people"), but it might be that I've been projecting too much of PG's views onto YC as a whole.

It makes a lot of sense to me that the idea would absolutely be key, which is why I've always been a bit suspect of the "people >> ideas" attitude. Not to say that the team isn't the more important piece, but I'm suspicious of the idea that a great team will usually gravitate towards a good business, left to their own devices.