The goal was to have a place and time where the show runner and the writers would spend a few days mulling over script ideas by their writers. They'd get away from the grind, away from distractions, away from the studio, so they could consider ideas on their merits and hear their young writers sketch out hazy early-stage story visions.
They say it worked well for them initially. They identified good ideas really early, and because they got involved early, while the ideas were still malleable, they could give guidance on what the valuable parts of the story were, and what to focus on; that helped the writer when he went away to work on the idea to turn it into a real script.
However, they stopped doing the story retreats. Why?
The reason a show runner gave was that eventually, the retreat became a formality.
People were coming in with a nearly-finished product. They were practicing their presentations to the show runners, pitching them. Sometimes they came in with whole scripts ready, or nearly-complete outlines or A stories.
Which is great. But now you don't need a retreat. If you're going to prepare all of that stuff on your own time anyway, okay ... just do that. If the idea looks like it merits a slot at all, and you have episode slots to fill, how do you turn down polished work? Of course, the beneficial effects of experienced and talented writers guiding a writer's promising first take disappeared. There was nothing to guide. Again, no reason to have the retreat.
It sounds like pitches to YC have become more polished, and that makes me wonder. (Of course, the parallels are pretty tenuous, it just got me thinking).
Clearly, PG and Company are going to enjoy that. It's hard to turn down done work. It's a good thing if you can pitch. I just hope, for the sake of the little future Reddits and Social Calendars out there, that pg, jessica and the gang are protected from the glare coming off that polish.
Also, everyone who's gone through the YC interview process and written about it says that, if they had any intentions to pitch at all, they were quickly derailed by questions.
Learn about the market. How do your competitors find users/customers affordably?
Learn about the competition. What are they doing well? What do people hate about their offering?
Learn about your users! Surveys, lunches, etc. If your product isn't something that you yourselves would use, you should spend a lot of time with potential customers.
Learn how to talk about your product. Test headlines, stumbleupon landing pages, adwords ads-- whatever it takes to learn that people respond more to "Nice juicy steak" more than they respond to "Muscle tissue sample of a castrated bull" (hat tip to Robert Heinlein).
In other words, pre-launch marketing (research, understanding, outreach)!