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Sounds like you've gathered a fair amount of your own data similar to what the “Startup Genome” project is aiming at.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/20/startup-genome-ranks-the-wo...

This would definitely make for interesting reading if/when you choose to share details.

Also, it sounds like at least part of the Y Combinator size issue is a version of Dunbar's Number, applied to business rather than social relationships.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number



We wouldn't want to share everything on our list of predictors of failure, because some would stop working if applicants knew about them. Some though are things applicants could only fix by actually making their startups better, so I should probably write something about any of those I haven't already talked about.


A brief bullet-point list of the ones you can talk about (both those you have and haven't written up already) which have been statistically validated at YC sounds overwhelmingly valuable.

Including the Ns would be even more overwhelmingly valuable. I.e. I can calculate a Bayesian likelihood ratio and get some idea of the confidence from e.g.:

* Founder has green hair: Successes 10/80 Failures 40/122

However I would much rather have the brief bullet-point list than not have the bullet point list with lovely numbers attached.


Somehow I am afraid that this sets the stage for an endless discussion about the "hidden" ycombinator acceptance criteria. I am already looking forward to the "how I uncovered x of pg's criteria" posts.

Implying that there are secret rules to "a game" make it a highly attractive subject to try to discover these.


Yeah I was just going to point out Dunbar's number. At that point you have to introduce more layers of management, rather than everyone just knowing each other.




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