Yes, I've come to realize that investors who spend the majority of the time asking me about the legality of my startup really don't have any experience with, or understanding of these types of startups.

Wishing and ignoring amounts to nothing.

If you think average would be a better measure than median, say why. You might possibly be right, but given PG's track record re. Bayesian filtering, "You fail at statistical analysis" just doesn't seem like the right response. It also sounds like attacking the person rather than the statement.

This is easy to protect against. Just obscure pg's real name from a portion of the YC userbase.

This is really an extremely easy test to get right if we think for a minute.

That's a great idea. I think it would probably work, but I can think of one potential case where it would introduce some complications.

If user1 sees 'pg' as the submitter and user2 sees 'blah' user1 might comment something which gives away that it is actually pg to user2. Now user2 might realize this and act on their pg bias.

Can you think of a way to prevent this?

Way:

group1 that contains user1 should be isolated from group2 that contains user2. They can't see each other's replies.

But I wouldn't want such things to happen here except on Apr 1.

Incorrect. He discovered that other bloggers have been providing a false view of startup landscape.

Great point. This has always stuck out as an incredible demonstration of the failure of online tech journalism. I'm surprised that more have not written about this.

That's what I assumed what they were going for. Actually, I fully support this approach.

It's a bit late to say that they all will fail...

I could say that for the majority of the time, face to face communications are what's failing people. It's inefficient and limiting for so many purposes.

There are times when I get more satisfaction from talking in person. When talking to the opposite sex in a non-work capacity or having beers with the guys or doing sports. For the first of those at least, 95% of the world doesn't live within constant reach of enough people to keep it interesting.

YC is a clone of Google's SOC project that occurred the prior summer. Taking on multiple projects simultaneously, providing about 5k, accepting applications, three month timeline, having frequent meetings between people and mentors, bringing in outside mentors, having a day at the end for people to present their accomplishments.

It is natural to be concerned about competitors, but everyone who is being abrasive to these other angels for copying a couple aspects is harming the angel investment community overall. YC is just a couple people with a couple MM, they can't fund everyone.

Bonus similarities: appealing to the young, first session occurred immediately after google's finished, setting up mailing list forum for those interested, primary announcement occurred on slashdot.

YC wasn't copied from the Summer of Code. We weren't really aware how that worked. What it was copied from, initially, was the classic college student summer job at a software co. The idea was basically to let people get a summer job starting a startup.

Later we tossed some aspects of that (going back to school in the fall doesn't work well with startups), but kept others, like the 3-month cycle.

So everyone is a clone.

midgets standing on the shoulders of giants, as even the mighty will admit. what matters is the evolution with each new generation. get the right mix of memes and you end up with something very powerful, which YC arguably is