Y Combinator's Founding Principles
my 2c, as a casual, third party observer:<p>Kudos:
afaict, yc is a &quot;good actor&quot; in contrast to &quot;bad actor&quot; VCs that have received recent notoriety<p>yc does its part in putting out knowledge into the world re: how to build startups (cynically, this is to promote brand, PR)<p>yc funds non-profits<p>yc promotes diversity esp relative to its SV peers<p>Criticism:
yc is elitist. with a few exceptions (you have PMF), you have to know someone<p>yc is incredible for the 1% that get in, to the detriment (broadly) of the 99% that don&#x27;t. they get a disproportionate amount of attention, capital and support<p>yc is a VC firm (+bootcamp), but with a vastly superior economic model, which is pretty incredible given how good VC economics are<p>the part about it not being about the money rings hollow. my guess is it&#x27;s 90-95% about the money. YC partners have made hundreds of millions (in the future, YC will probably mint a few billionaires) of dollars. every batch, 7% of the equity of 100-150 &quot;cream of the crop&quot; startups goes to a handful of partners. if YC&#x27;s primary goal was social impact, the batch would look a lot different -- not saying yc doesn&#x27;t do good, but i think a typical VC is at least straightforward that their goal, and fiduciary responsibility is to make $. i think YC sugarcoats this for branding purposes when they de-emphasize this.<p>the narrative around SV has really taken a turn for the worse. income inequality is a real problem, and also getting worse. one could easily argue SV is exacerbating this, and YC is a factory of many of the startups causing this. the future is already here, it&#x27;s just unevenly distributed