That surely depends on whether the startups that fall through the cracks of the existing system caught by ApplyHN prove to be, on average, [close to] as successful as the ones picked up by the existing system and thus deserving of being caught. The cracks could be a feature rather than a bug.

Obviously you need more than two startups to make this sort of deduction, and I'm perfectly willing to believe that these and other startups missed by the traditional application process genuinely are more promising than some of those selected by it, but I'm not sure that what we have at the moment is really evidence either way.