SearchYC.com

As we were clicking "submit" the other day, I was thinking about what separates the teams that get accepted from the teams that don't. There are a bunch of criteria we're judged on, but perhaps the most important (and the source of the irony I'm talking about) is that for a team to be accepted, it can't need YC.

That doesn't mean, of course, that being YC alums isn't wonderful and helpful and all the rest. What it does mean is that the people who get in are exactly the kind of people who would respond best to not getting in--namely by keeping busy on the company as if nothing had happened.

It's a frequent theme in PG's essays that YC takes people for whom building cool things is a bodily function, not something they need external incentives or security to do. This same irony applies to nearly every competitive application process (e.g. PG's other advice that companies obsessed with getting bought are the very ones that don't get bought). I feel that keeping that in mind is a very useful approach to these things.

And good luck!

This is a great illustration of why exposing yourself to randomness is useful. I'd bet that all successful startups have similar stories of chance meetings that led to something great.