But so much of YC felt (and probably does more so now) like you're being judged all the time. Which makes total sense to me, because seeking prestige is so fundamental to human nature. That co-evolved with social cooperation in a virtuous cycle.

If pg really believed what he wrote in this essay, YC would be structured very differently. The moment pg allowed some companies/founders to have better access to him than others, or the moment he talked about how some founders are better than others, he implicitly set up a criteria for judging founders and their companies. And people will always naturally feel envy and try to hack that criteria. But a precondition for doing good original work is not feeling judged. So he should have gone on a crusade to completely eliminate all forms of favoritism if he wanted to maximize the odds of success for a modal company. But that's not what he actually ended up doing. At all.

Now the question is, is the essay wrong or is the YC structure/culture wrong. If I were a betting man, I'd put all my money on the former every single time, and I think I'd never come lose that bet once.