&gt;I don&#x27;t get the impression there&#x27;s much magic. She&#x27;s highly socially skilled around people who are less so.<p>I try not to believe in magic as well, so I assume there are reasons why a particular founder was judged unsuitable. It&#x27;s just that those reasons are not explored and all the language used to described the YC process is essentially an appeal to a magic oracle.<p>&gt;Imagine if Jessica ran a VC firm with two other people like her, plus Paul, and they were trying to fund companies that required immense social skills.<p>I&#x27;ve never been inside a VC firm, so it&#x27;s difficult for me to imagine precisely what that would be like. Are you saying that the scenario in this hypothetical is different from YC?<p>&gt;The founders would all be excellent conversationalists and promoters, and could probably fake the tech talk enough that Jessica couldn&#x27;t tell. PG would be able to spot the buzzwords and call them on it, and it would seem magical to the rest because they don&#x27;t know SQL from C++.<p>It sounds like a decent strategy. Certainly not foolproof, but at least you can filter out the people who understand the language, but not yet the technicals...I think.