YC's Scaling Problem
I am not affiliated with YC or have any personal insight into the inner workings of YC. It is hard to track YC’s success (with precision) as those metrics are largely not public, and this article is mainly a speculative guess based on limited history.
Generally, the YC thesis makes a lot of sense. Remove the barrier to entry and networking required to get VC funding and fund smart (curious) people. The requirement for this to work is that YC must be run by smart people with experience. Until now, smart (curious) people have attracted smart (curious) people who in turn attract more smart (curious) people, leading to a sort of snowball effect. Interestingly, this leads to a market where YC is heavily dominant over even the second-best pre-seed specialists, as all the smart people go to YC.
The issue is that the first premise (“Until now, smart (curious) people have attracted smart people…leading to a sort of snowball effect.”) is at least weaker now, specifically the “curious” part.
