To me, the biggest thing this announcement signaled is that YC is getting serious about inclusion. As someone from the "wrong" part of the country for technology, I struggle immensely to not feel resentful towards founders and VCs who give preference candidates from their social class, their university, their geographical region.

The whole culture of "founding" and "connections" in general is like nothing I ever had experienced growing up. My parents didn't just "know" lawyers, investors, doctors, researchers, technical experts, we knew teachers and mechanics and middle managers. They barely knew what startups were. How could I have competitively prepared myself for this path when it was essentially invisible to me until I was an adult?

Now I have a CS degree and have proven myself at one of the most intense technical corporations, but I'll still never be as convincing as the person who had parents that encouraged them to apply to Stanford and got admitted, or the person who's family "connections" landed them the opportunity for an investment at a younger age. Or the person who could actually afford to not work part-time or over summers and could do their own projects then and build a portfolio.

The Startup School was supposedly a chance for YC to expand their reach to include people all over the world, but I wonder if the same exact biases around social-class, university, and geographic area were key to the selection of the preferred class.

Regardless, this is indeed huge step forward and on that improves my perspective on YC and tech investment culture in general.

I hear what you are saying, but someone who wants to build their own custom car garage would complain that he didn't grow up around mechanics.

It's relative, and honestly you know nothing about those people who supposedly 'got a head start', when it comes to their health, their personal relationships, or even who they are as people.

Furthermore if you really want to play that game, why not compare yourself to someone from Syria, or Africa and compare 'unfair advantages' then.

Hah! "Team 2nd chance"... love it! We should get t-shirts made with that on them and everything.

You do make a good point though. This is a great chance for a lot of us to show the doubters that they were wrong, and to prove that we do belong.

You can forever keep the chip on your shoulder here: https://teamsecondchance.threadless.com/

* Profit (if any) will go to a charity we can decide upon in the thread below. I nominate doctors without borders because they always do good work.

* Help with design is appreciated. I'm just a clueless engineer...

* Should you spend time designing a better version, the thought might occur to you that you are not spending that time on your startup and that might be a reason why you're team 2nd chance... ;-)

Thanks YC (and the bug) for considering to support us. Giving everyone a chance is actually a YC-ish move.