

Ask HN: Is the YC application frenzy justified? - malanj

I&#x27;m applying to YC for the first time and wondering about the need to &quot;hack&quot; your YC application.<p>My thinking:
1. The YC guys are all really smart and at this point are great at sorting good from not-so-good companies
2. They say they are primarily looking for good people who have determination. It seems that simple answers to the application form will give them the data to make that call.
3.  We don&#x27;t want to spend time hacking getting into YC, we&#x27;d like to rather hack building a great company and assume they can judge our ability to do that without frills.<p>=&gt; At this point we&#x27;ve spent about 1 day on our application and we&#x27;re keen to move back to working on our company. Is that crazy? Does YC want high levels of polish (multiple hours on your video?), or are they polish immune?<p>I think YC is definitely worth spending lots of time on, I&#x27;m just not sure if it&#x27;s important to them. It seems quite feasible that in spite of all the “get into YC” articles they’ll be able to make the call on a naïve interpretation of their application questions.
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bifrost
Frankly, RE: "hacking the app"

You will most likely be found out pretty quickly and you're just wasting
people's time if you do get through. If you have a good idea, stick with that.
If your idea isn't good enough, improve it.

