
PG charts acceleration of YC applications since noon - nthnclrk
http://chart.googleapis.com/chart?cht=ls&chs=100x300&chd=t:70,70,70,70,70,70,70,71,71,71,71,71,71,71,72,72,72,72,72,72,72,73,73,73,73,73,74,74,74,74,74,74,74,75,75,75,75,75,76,76,76,76,77,77,77,78,78,78,78,78,79,79,79,79,80,80,80,81,81,81,82,82,82,83,83,83,83,84,84,85,85,86,86,86,87,87,88,88,88,89,89,90,90,91,91,92,92,93,93,94,94,95,95,96,96,96,97,98,98,99
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highCs
Oh the server is down:
[http://chart.googleapis.com/chart?cht=ls&chs=62x300&chd=t:70...](http://chart.googleapis.com/chart?cht=ls&chs=62x300&chd=t:70,70,70,70,70,70,70,71,71,71,71,71,71,71,72,72,72,72,72,72,72,73,73,73,73,73,74,74,74,74,74,74,74,75,75,75,75,75,76,76,76,76,77,77,77,78,78,78,78,78,79,79,79,79,80,80,80,81,81,81,82,82,82,50,50,50,50,50,50,50,50,50,50,50,50,50,50,50,50,50,50,50,50,50)

~~~
pg
You had me there for about 1.5 seconds. I've seen too many real graphs that
look like that.

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highCs
=D

~~~
gailees
lol

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pg
I knew a lot of people applied on the last day but I've always been curious
about the shape of the curve, so I finally wrote something to track it.

The current rate is about 1.3 applications per minute. I'm guessing that will
increase smoothly till the deadline, since the curve looks so smooth so far,
but we'll see.

~~~
melvinmt
I always wonder what happens with a resubmit (I must have done it tens of
times), does the original date still stand? Does it push it to the end of the
queue again? Do you see all the revisions?

~~~
pg
We only see the latest revision. There is no queue and thus not really any
concept of a date.

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jgoldsmith
Is this a graph of the rate of change (acceleration) of applications, or a
graph of the raw number of applications submitted? Some labels might be
helpful.

~~~
pg
This is total applications submitted (scaled to fit the graph).

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sethbannon
It would be really interesting to see a historical breakdown of acceptance
rate by submission time until deadline.

~~~
pg
I've always meant to check if that's a predictor, but anecdotal evidence
suggests not. I.e. I know some of the most successful startups applied at the
last minute, but not all did.

~~~
aswath87
That seems to contradict - "Early submissions have a significant advantage
because we have more time to look at them and engage with the founders." :)

~~~
kapitalx
But then we saw a team get accepted on stage on Saturday, so there is
definitely some anecdotal evidence for advantage of early submission :)

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DjangoReinhardt
TL;DR: I may or may not have contributed to a point on that curve and I am not
sure how to feel about it.

I began filling out the form on the day the application window was announced.
Halfway through, I realized the answers I had to some of the questions on the
form, were either unconvincing or simply non-existent. As I progressed, I
realized that me and my idea both sounded increasingly half-assed, so I
promptly stopped, saved the form, quietly went back to the drawing board and
started attempting to figure out the answers.

It has been roughly two months since that day, I guess. I still don't have all
the answers but I can at least tell myself now that the idea is worth a
shot...

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gibybo
How is this being updated? The data is encoded in the url, so the link url
must be changing periodically. Doesn't this mean 'nthnclrk' is doing the
charting?

~~~
pg
I've been updating it manually occasionally.

~~~
gault8121
how do the nonprofit applications compare to the for profit?

~~~
akanet
According to
[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/392057586389753856](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/392057586389753856),
5% of applicants are nonprofits.

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kyro
Not entirely related, but do you think your assessment of a particular
application (team, idea or any other component therein) is influenced at all
by the quality of applications that precede and succeed it, especially
considering the sheer volume and the rate at which you go through the apps?

~~~
TennisID
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospital_resident#Matching_algo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospital_resident#Matching_algorithm)
and
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem)
offer clues.

~~~
kyro
Yes, I'm familiar with both, intimately so with the first. I know it occurs,
and was wondering to what degree he thinks it does and if there any controls
in place.

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jermaink
It would be interesting to know more about the (historical) distribution of
the overall applications, especially how many are settled within the last one
percent quantile of time.

Assuming a distribution and working with a simple e-function, around 3.500
total applications with an acceptance rate around 1.25% (batch<50) might be a
ballpark estimate.

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VaedaStrike
Considering the creative nature of the whole enterprise it is kind of nice to
know I made a very very small part of that curve.

May it be one of the first of many such convex curves.

Reminds me of Nasim Taleb's smile and frown demonstrations vis a vis fragility
and anti-fragility.

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5vforest
On the software side, how are you managing to sort through the sheer number of
applicants?

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6thSigma
An interesting (albeit impossible to track) metric would be how much time the
average YC application took - and if the time spent correlates with acceptance
at all.

I wonder if that graph would look closer to a bell curve or exponential decay.

~~~
trey_swann
An increase in time spent would not increase the success rate. Probably the
opposite. More time spent -- less likely that an applicant is on the right
track.

Applicants that submit at the last minute have likely been thinking
about/living with the problem for a while, and they are able to quickly
articulate the problem, their solution, and the reason that they will be
successful.

~~~
6thSigma
We agree. Both the bell curve and the exponential delay curve would mean the
more time spent on the application, the less likely that team is to be
accepted.

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zabramow
Curious if you've speculated about the reason for the high volume of late
applications, especially since you're pretty clear that early apps have a
better chance to get accepted.

~~~
hakcermani
It is like the lottery rush hours before the draw.

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rdmcfee
Any guess on correlation between location of applicant and proximity of
application time to deadline? Is the 8pm PST deadline keeping the European
applicants up late?

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bujatt
yes.

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fbnt
What's the record amount of applicants per batch so far?

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Link-
Would like to see this curve if it was a real-time updating chart publicly
available on HN :P (P.S Don't forget the username when reading my
application!)

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anish_t
nthnclrk just curious where you got the updated chart in your link. the chart
link in PG's tweet has much less data...

