I hope that despite the competition you will still be able to discuss some trends in the applications you get -- as much as YC is a serious business now, I suspect it's been an interesting sociological experiment for some people.
Regarding the larger number of groups you might accept, I can't help but wonder how YC will scale in the near future. You recently said that the number of unsuccessful startups in the first batch was very low, and it seems that you are getting an extremely self-selected pool of applicants to start with. If you can manage funding more people at once (I suspect time is the bottleneck), I'd venture a guess that you'll keep a 'success' rate way above the standard VC level.
And if you get to work with a few groups from overseas, I'd be keen to learn if you noticed any (cultural?) differences in their approach, or whether hackers are just hackers, regardless of their location...
We already have some practice scaling. The first batch was 8 startups, and the most recent 13. I think we could get to 20 or even 30 without changing the model substantially. Beyond that we might have to hire people, or get alumni to help.
So far, foreign founders seem a bit more serious. Makes sense, because merely coming to the US is a big step for them.
Comments
Paul,
I hope that despite the competition you will still be able to discuss some trends in the applications you get -- as much as YC is a serious business now, I suspect it's been an interesting sociological experiment for some people.
Regarding the larger number of groups you might accept, I can't help but wonder how YC will scale in the near future. You recently said that the number of unsuccessful startups in the first batch was very low, and it seems that you are getting an extremely self-selected pool of applicants to start with. If you can manage funding more people at once (I suspect time is the bottleneck), I'd venture a guess that you'll keep a 'success' rate way above the standard VC level.
And if you get to work with a few groups from overseas, I'd be keen to learn if you noticed any (cultural?) differences in their approach, or whether hackers are just hackers, regardless of their location...
We already have some practice scaling. The first batch was 8 startups, and the most recent 13. I think we could get to 20 or even 30 without changing the model substantially. Beyond that we might have to hire people, or get alumni to help.
So far, foreign founders seem a bit more serious. Makes sense, because merely coming to the US is a big step for them.