In a way we do, in that it's one (of many) examples for someone doing something impressive in the past. We definitely look for founders who have shown some evidence of doing something impressive (and we try to adjust for whatever life circumstances people were born into).
But the main reason we don't is that there are important counterexamples in our portfolio, and if we said "we're only going to fund founders from top schools" we'd miss out on some big successes.
I wasn't suggesting that you should only fund founders from top schools, but that you should select for it (which it sounds like you already do).
The pedigrees of some of YC's most successful founders, for anyone who's curious:
* Twitch: Yale, MIT
* Cruise: MIT, Claremont McKenna
* OMGPOP: Princeton
* Heroku: UCSD
* Airbnb: RISD, Harvard
* Dropbox: MIT
* Zenefits: Harvard
It's interesting that Stanford and Berkeley are not represented here, probably because good companies founded by students there can easily get funded without going through YC. It seems like YC's strength lies in drawing elites from the rest of the country to SV.
Thanks for the additions. Don't know much about RethinkDB, but as for the others:
Reddit is a great example of founders without pedigree. Although it hasn't been too successful as a company, it's created phenomenal value for its users. I definitely spend more time on Reddit than Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat/Twitter combined.
I'd say Waterloo is elite in the tech sense, and Apoorva worked at Amazon in fulfillment, so it made a lot of sense in the specific case of Instacart.
Mixpanel was being advised by Max Levchin from before they applied to YC. He became their first big customer and helped them with every funding round, and probably put in a good word with YC when they applied[0]. Another YC alum, Amplitude, which is founded by MIT grads, is now giving Mixpanel a run for their money[1,2]. I don't know Suhail or Tim, but I can't imagine the average ASU dropout's experience would be anything like theirs.
When was the last time you built a billion dollar company? Conrad's resignation doesn't change the fact that he has accomplished a hell of a lot more in his professional life than 99.9% of people ever have or will.
But the main reason we don't is that there are important counterexamples in our portfolio, and if we said "we're only going to fund founders from top schools" we'd miss out on some big successes.