Given that picking the right startups is hard how will this increase in applications be handled over time? Increasing the reviewers will not necessarily mean that the quality is still the same. Will the number of days for review be increased in future?
It's always been just the 4 partners reviewing the applications. We've added a few improvements in the software that manages the process, but mostly it just takes us longer. We are probably getting a little faster with experience, though.
Rtm and Trevor and I each read them online independently and vote on them. Then they're ranked in order of their total score (normalized because Rtm always gives low grades). Then we meet to argue about borderline cases. At the end of that meeting we have a clearly defined set of 50-60 groups we want to interview.
I went back and looked at the applications for the current cycle, and roughly half the groups we invited to interviews tied for the highest grade from Rtm. Which was a B+.
Do you think you could make this data public, maybe starting off with startups that didn't make it, including YC's comments when they were evaluated during the interview?
I am sure there is a lot of great info in there that would help other startups. It would be like using etherpad for writing essays :-), we could peek into YC's thought process.
I imagine picking the people to interview is an exciting part of running something like YC. And although the act of reading paper applications is probably more prosaic in reality, the videos should make it more interesting.
Well they are planning on interviewing and accepting more... So that might help a little.
Paul also mused about getting the YC alumni more involved --but I read this in execution rather than selection (not that there was any indication either way).
