Spoiler alert: it's "easy" when you narrow down to applications who come from wealth and/or went to a prestigious university.

What is wrong with selecting founders who attended a prestigious university? It seems like an excellent signal. Also: "Come from wealth" might be useful if their idea will take a bit longer to germinate. They can survive longer in "ramen profitable" mode.

One could imagine a more equitable society where startups weren't solely (hyperbole) reserved for those who come from wealth and privilege. Nothing wrong with prestigious schools until that's the only metric you're looking at when you could also evaluate on sound fundamentals, ability and technical competence.

Of course modern investors (or a least the ones at VC) probably aren't qualified to judge applicants on merit.

Where do you see that it's reserved? I get that it's a hyperbole, but startups are the best, most used and most successful tool for upwards social mobility. Nothing has changed the life of so many people, no amount of taxes or regulations was able to improve lives of so many, so much.

Picking people is also hard, but if you narrow it down to:

1) folks who follow the directions on the application, 2) have the technical ability to build, 3) demonstrate high achievement in school/career, 4) show commitment/persistence, 5) have an idea that makes some sense, 6) are able to clearly communicate the idea, 7) have good team dynamics, 8) have some plausible strategy for growth

AND are willing to sell 7% of their startup for 125K

then the resulting pool of startups is probably smaller than you would think.

A good idea will not scale if the founder and founding team are bad, and a mediocre idea will scale if the founder and founding team are good.

It's not, but that's ycs entire business model

i don't think it is either. at least not for me.

but YC has always been pretty vocal that they can identify the right people. And their results seem to bear that out at least to some degree (or maybe it's all just scale, and giving opportunities to enough people means you'll give opportunities to the right people often enough to balance out the cost of the wrong people)