Fine, he was mischaracterized and he replied.

But jesus,

> pg's response is actually priceless: it is like a soft-spoken witness upending a bullying lawyer who had just viciously attacked him, leaving the attacker reeling for all to see.

What's with the almost cult-like reverence for this largely pseudo-intellectual entrepreneur?

A word about credibility. It comes from the Latin word credo, meaning "I trust." Its value exceeds that of money because it marks you as a person - as someone who is respected, who is trustworthy, and whom you would want to count as a friend. It marks you not as perfect but as special. It makes others ponder not so much that they did the last deal with you but that they would want to do the next deal too. Just as we build credit through many transactions, so we build credibility by the very pattern of our lives. Credit and credibility derive from the same root and signify the same thing: when in doubt, we can trust the one who has either trait. Not blind trust, just a benefit-of-the-doubt level of trust.

Well, pg has earned our trust and deserved the benefit of the doubt when something so off kilter as this is attributed to him. He did not get it here, and that is a sad testament to how crowd-inspired frenzies can bend our perceptions in such faulty ways. Let us only hope that we can learn some good lessons from this.

pg's response is actually priceless: it is like a soft-spoken witness upending a bullying lawyer who had just viciously attacked him, leaving the attacker reeling for all to see. Indeed, the mob looks pretty much like an ass at this point and kudos to pg for his more-than-able defense. Very lawyer-like, in a way, but far more classy.

As a female founder, I think this is a well-thought-out, articulate response, and I appreciate pg stepping up to say something about women in tech.

In a similar vein, I'd love to see YC take on one or both of the following:

1) Do at least one application cycle completely blind. How could you accomplish this? Much like in the concert auditions where this was first tried, put people behind a curtain--and then use technology to change their voices so every voice sounds the same. I think it would be a really cool experiment to see if different types of companies or a more diverse founder set would get funded.

2) Publish more stats on the success of YC companies, and publish stats on % of female(, black, ...) founder applications submitted, % accepted, % funded after acceptance, etc. Of course, I'd fully expect that this would be "opt-in" from the founders as well--i.e. each set of founders would need to agree as part of the application to have their data anonymously shared. You could also share data on % who opted to not have their data shared. (Techstars is doing some great stuff with their stats here: http://www.techstars.com/companies/stats/ )

I've talked to many female founders and YC does have a reputation as a "frat house" (I told one of the YC partners that personally when he asked me to apply.) I decided to not apply to YC and instead was in the first Techstars Austin cohort, which was a fantastic program overall. Techstars definitely seemed more welcoming to women from my perspective as a geek-turned-tech-entrepreneur.

I'm hoping this is the start of breaking down the "frat house" reputation around YC and getting more women actively involved with it.

I apologize. I took it on faith that when The Information said they were running a "complete interview" with you, that it was in fact both complete and an actual interview. It seems very clear how this piece misrepresented you; the entire elided question you cite is particularly damning. I retain some of my misgivings (which have much more to do with the industry than with YC), but the "interview" clearly wasn't a good lens through which to consider them. I was nevertheless ready to do that too quickly, so the fault is as much mine as the magazine's.