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Comment by cperciva | Hacker News Reader

PG used to say "if you're not accepted, it doesn't mean that you're not good, it just means that we have a limited number of spots", but recently he has tended towards saying "YC will take as many good teams as we find". I'm not sure if this is a change in YC's philosophy about accepting teams or just that PG is less concerned about not hurting the feelings of people who aren't accepted.

(PG: I apologize if I'm completely off here, but the above is my impression of what you've been saying, at least -- if I've misunderstood what you've been saying I hope you'll correct me!)

In any case, the answer is the same: First, make sure that the YC team knows that they'd be idiots to not accept you; and second, if you're not accepted, go ahead with your startup anyway, and make sure that the entire world knows that the YC team were idiots for not accepting you.

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You may be conflating two types of acceptance. We have a limited (though now larger) number of interview slots, so there it's the case that we can't interview everyone we want to. E.g. there are groups I voted to interview, but that we won't be interviewing, because not enough other YC partners did. But there's no such limit on the number of startups we can accept out of interviews.

Ok Thanks. That's what I wanted to know.

Hey Paul, when I submitted my app I submitted as a single person. After the deadline I added two critical co-founders to help execute the technical side. Since then, I've been concerned that the app would have been considerably strengthened had I included the other co-founders in the app. Would like to hear your thoughts on this

He probably can't help you, especially this late. The best course of action probably would have been to email him as soon as the cofounders were official.

It would make sense for them to allow you to reapply as a late applicant (with all the disadvantages of being a late applicant) because you've had such a significant change since applying. That would set a dangerous precedent though: "I added one more feature to my demo! It's a significant change, so I can reapply!"

But that wouldn't be a huge deal since they only skim the late apps anyway. And for reapplying, the first question could be "What has changed since your on time application?" They could then very quickly reject people without a good reason to reapply.

You may be conflating two types of acceptance. [...]

Aha! Yes, I'm sure that's what happened.

So the short-listing stage is competitive, but the final accept/reject is based solely on the individual merits?

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