Benefits matter, or why I won't work for your Y Combinator startup
The prestige asset generated by YC is interesting, because I bet it's going to have an unintended consequence of increasing the social difference between founders and employees.If you're a YC founder, you're in the club. You were picked. It's great if you succeed; if you fail, you have a network.  If you're a YC employee, you're just an employee of a small startup. YC founders seem, at least from this, to be blind to the fact that their employees aren't able to cash in on the prestige of being YC and will therefore expect hard currency.I think that crappy benefits send a pretty awful signal: we're not committed enough to making your life not suck. A 25-year-old founder is going to think of that stuff as an afterthought, while the 40-year-old is thinking, "kid, if I wanted to take on that kind of risk and insanity, I'd have your job". Health insurance is a goddamn mess and a company can't expect to get it right in an afternoon, but it is important.