It is opt-in:

> We’re also enabling any YC company to opt into having their YC application video, written application answers, and Demo Day video public on the YC Startup Directory

I'm mainly concerned about the listing of me as a person at all, not the materials.

But if you chose to incorporate and run a company in the US as YC requires, and participate in their program, you'd be "public" regardless, in various forms.

There's being in public, and there's being put on a pedestal (:

As far as I can see, choosing to become a founder in YC and succeeding at it requires a bit of desire for the limelight.

Not necessarily. With young startups, the only available position for a role is often "Founder". A developer could simply want to work on a project and see where it goes, and the only way would be to become a founder.

In general yes. But with YC, I get the feeling that there is a push for founders who at the very least won’t actively shun the limelight if required.

Yep: There's a reason a bunch of YC founders appear every year like clockwork on popularity lists like Forbes 30u30 ...

It's almost certainly opt-out for founders, I would be very surprised if they individually went back and got permission from every founder for the past decade before creating this.

I see someone I know would have said no if asked, for example, as their time at YC was pretty awful and resulted in what they consider to be shameful failure.

Yeah, that sounds right, and I don't agree with making it opt-out. I think it should be opt-in and like you am now almost completely certain that it isn't.

Maybe it’s a lack of imagination, but I can’t think of why any kind of YC experience should be shameful, provided lessons were learned and no one ended up in jail.

That said, I still agree it should be opt-in.

He had to drop out due to still-unresolved mental health issues, and the source of his shame is mostly that he didn't deal with those issues earlier, and still isn't dealing with them now.

Hmm, I see. Can relate too. I still see that as no reason for shame, even though from within that situation it can feel shameful. The journey to getting better can be a long and challenging one that’s hard to make sense of from the outside.

I would like to give you some feedback; nobody cares if you see something as shameful or not, least of all the person feeling the shame.

Looking for any YC application video, written application answers made public so far. Any links?