
Welcome Sam, Garry, Emmett, and Justin - pg
http://ycombinator.posterous.com/welcome-sam-garry-emmett-and-justin
======
staunch
It's a dojo.

The most senior students teach you all the basic stances/punches/kicks/throws.
The sensei helps you put it all together into a coherent fighting style.

~~~
Shenglong
That sounds nice. When I was training, it was: senior students teach you the
basic moves, and then the teacher chases you around with a big stick telling
you to move faster.

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inmygarage
These sorts of additions to the YC team provide a great example of how YC will
scale its model. There's so much shared knowledge and know-how among the
alumni and that's what will enable YC to create hundreds of companies a year
without sacrificing quality.

~~~
jurjenh
This kinda looks like an apprentice-ship training system! The master adviser
trains up a few keen trainees, these then in turn become masters who train
more apprentices etc...

Maybe it IS a pyramid scheme all along! I did have my suspicions with the
recent discussion / evaluation of YC performance.

~~~
justin
A pyramid scheme is a zero-sum game where wealth accrues up the pyramid in
exchange for promises of future riches to the new recruits. YC startups thus
far have been a positive sum game to the tune of $4 billion. Additionally, new
YC companies aren't required to pay anyone for the things YC provides (as
opposed to a pyramid scheme).

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leahculver
As part of YC winter 2011 I've already had office hours with both Sam and
Garry. The nice part of having so many advisors is that each advisor tends to
specialize in different areas (Garry is great with design and UX and Sam has
good advice on social products and fundraising).

A wider variety of expertise is super helpful for the increasingly diverse
group of YC companies.

Welcome Sam, Garry, Emmett, and Justin!

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indyT
This move seems to indicate that the startups are having issues getting
access/undivided attention from the 'senior' partners. It is great that
ycombinator has become so successful but the value prop of it seems to be
diminishing as it grows. If I wanted to collaborate with other founders there
are plenty of meetup groups I could attend without giving up a large share of
my company.

~~~
justin
Ouch! ;) I'm probably biased but a big part of the value we've received from
YC has been from access to alumni -- for example, when going out for our
series A Sam was actually the most helpful out of anyone we spoke to, having
just gone through the process himself (and done a killer job!). I think the
view we can bring as alumni going through later stage startups is that we have
immediate relevant operational experience to earlier stage startups.

~~~
indyT
that wasn't intended to diminish your personal value or expertise. I think
there is a general concern that future YC batches will have less personal
involvement from the people that made YC compelling.

~~~
tomsaffell
As s2009 alumni and current class (s2011) member I don't see any trend to
support that concern.

~~~
rdl
From what I've heard from people in YC, Sam, Garry, and a few other YC alums
have been incredibly useful, in addition to the senior YC partners. The only
bottleneck has been food distribution at events.

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dgunn
It seems that with each session, YC takes on more and more companies. Will
this extra help continue to make this a YC norm? Has there been an upper limit
defined?

~~~
pg
We can handle about 20 startups per (full-time) partner. Maybe 25. So with 10
partners advising startups we could get up to 200-250 startups simultaneously.
Not that we expect to anytime soon; the point is just that if there is a
limit, it's not immediately in front of us.

~~~
edanm
Have you considered taking on far more teams?

You're growing from batch to batch, but if you could reach 200 startups by
your estimates, why not grow even faster? Is it just a matter of "slow and
steady"?

~~~
pg
Our growth is entirely a function of the growth in applications. So we don't
have much choice about our growth rate. To grow faster we'd have to fund
people we thought would fail, and to grow slower we'd have to reject people we
thought would succeed. Either would be painful.

~~~
netcan
Was the borderline rejected application in your 1st or 2nd years
indistinguishable form this year's, in terms of quality?

~~~
pg
The quality of the applicants has been slowly increasing. But we are also
slowly becoming less credulous.

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guildchatter
Grats Garry!

=]

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jdp23
Four more guys! That'll really help scale to a more gender-balanced group of
companies!

No insult to Sam, Garry, Emmet, and Justin who I'm sure are very talented. But
given how Jessica Livingston talks about how hard it's been for Y Combinator
to attract female founders and then they do something like this, I really have
to wonder how much they're trying to change.

~~~
pg
I think you're insulting female founders by suggesting that their decision
about whether to apply to something like YC would be determined by the gender
of the partners.

Surely male applicants wouldn't be scared off if most of the YC partners were
female. Why assume female applicants are any different?

~~~
jdp23
It's not a matter of women being "scared off". Diversifying the people at the
top is one of the key steps to getting a more diverse organization. This was
an opportunity to do it. YC chose not to.

In contrast, there's 500 Startups, where Dave McClure is actively reaching
out.* Which environment is likely to look more attractive to women
entrepeneurs?

* [http://www.ezebis.com/venture/dave-mcclure500-startups-found...](http://www.ezebis.com/venture/dave-mcclure500-startups-founderstaking-advantage-arbitrage-of-other-investors-disinclination/)

~~~
byrneseyeview
"She got into YCombinator. She must be good." vs "She got into 500 Startups.
She must be good. Or they must have tried to recruit her because of that
pronoun I keep using."

This is also why affirmative action hurts the careers of people who ostensibly
benefit from it, if they don't get into Harvard: at Harvard, the black/white
SAT gap is fairly small. Everywhere else, it's huge, so there's a big adverse
selection problem, and of course employers know about it.

