This is certainly an experiment that YC could afford to run. Going random is really the only way to know if your selection processes are extracting real value or not.<p>The best way of doing this would be to pull the random companies out of the good, but not good enough to fund, pile. I am sure YC has little problem telling a good startup from a bad one, but I bet they have real problem picking the excellent from the good. Trying to pick the excellent out of the good is where you are most likely to run into unconscious biases.