The first paragraph pretty much nails why I'm getting really sick of the startup / SV culture. "The Art of Ass-Kicking." These don't sound like people I'm interested in talking to or working with.

Dismissing people based on a few basic demographics (age, location, education, skill set) doesn't really make you someone interesting to talk or work with either... =)

I'm mostly dismissing you because of the annoying title and subtitle of your blog.

Huh? "The Art of Ass-Kicking" is a righteous name. I think your opinion regarding this is an outlier.

In fact, your strong reaction to it proves it's a potent name.

I think he's pushing against it because it's a lot of hype and buzz, and frankly sounds like it was written by either an advertiser or (even worse) a politician.

I think it's natural for a certain kind of hacker to steer clear of such indicators.

Randall has written a very interesting and painfully accurate book on the full YC experience. If you have questions about our YC experience, feel free to ask.

And for more info on the book - check out his site: http://randallstross.com/thelaunchpad/

Makes YC sounds fairly easy to get into, as long as you have energetic founders from good schools. I'm currently trying to find out what the Kalvin's had achieved before applying.

Good read tho. Thanks.

Among other things -- Kalvin and I started a nonprofit while in college that funded 800+ microfinance loans to developing world entrepreneurs and Randy was a hacker at Scribd (YC S06).

I think beyond that, they really appreciated how well we worked and functioned together as a unit (having been roommates and friends before YC), with differing but complementary skill sets and personalities.

Despite the sound of it, YC is harder to get into than Harvard. This is both statistically true based on acceptance and based on quality of applicant.

If it's easier to apply to YC than to Harvard, acceptance rates don't necessarily mean much.

(I suspect it's true that YC is harder to get into than Harvard, but I don't know how to measure that difficulty. Perhaps start by asking what % of people who get into YC would get into Harvard, and vice versa?)

My team of four got into YC with not a college degree between us. Two of us had most recently gone to community college, one of us dropped out of the University of Washington, and one of our teammates had just done six months at USC. Granted, USC is a "good school," but if you have a strong team that can demonstrably work well together, you have a good shot of getting into YC. In our case, we'd been on a very competitive high school robotics team for four years and had done other tech projects together.

This sounds like a special kind of hell. I don't think I'd fit at all.