They get about 6000 applicants, though.  For it to be useful to an applicant, it has to be something that can raise you from &quot;app would be ignored&quot; to &quot;might be interviewed&quot;, which means they have to do it on every application.  At five minutes per company, that&#x27;s more like 500 hours, or about 60 person-days.<p>I suspect this was more of a factor when most of the YC partners read HN as part of their day.  Then it was &quot;free&quot; work for them - they just would recognize usernames that pop up.  I think Trevor&#x27;s the only one still active on a daily basis here, so the chance that you&#x27;ll draw a reader who actively reads HN and has some name recognition for top commenters is much lower.<p>Also, the bar for &quot;name recognition&quot; is much higher now.  I&#x27;m #23 on &#x2F;leaders (I&#x27;d peaked out at #2 way back in 2008, when I was doing my first startup, but dropped significantly while hiding out within Google) and still feel like I don&#x27;t really have any useful name recognition here.