YC having a low acceptance rate could mean they are highly confident in their ability to predict ex ante outcomes. It could also mean that they get a lot of unserious applications. Essays such as this one by Paul Graham bemoaning the difficulty of predicting ex ante outcomes make me think it is more the latter. (“it’s mostly luck once you get down to the top 1-5%” makes it sound to me like ultra-successful startups should have elite founders, but my take on Graham’s essay is that ultra-successful startups tend to be unusual, often in a way that makes them look non-elite according to traditional metrics—I tend to suspect this is true of exceptionally innovative people more generally)
YC having a low acceptance rate could mean they are highly confident in their ability to predict ex ante outcomes. It could also mean that they get a lot of unserious applications. Essays such as this one by Paul Graham bemoaning the difficulty of predicting ex ante outcomes make me think it is more the latter. (“it’s mostly luck once you get down to the top 1-5%” makes it sound to me like ultra-successful startups should have elite founders, but my take on Graham’s essay is that ultra-successful startups tend to be unusual, often in a way that makes them look non-elite according to traditional metrics—I tend to suspect this is true of exceptionally innovative people more generally)