You can certainly bring on more people, but if you didn't know them before you started the company, your relationship is probably not going to be able to withstand the stresses that a startup will apply to it.

If we had really designed the YC application form to eliminate a huge amount of talent, that wouldn't be clever, would it? We'd lose a proportionately huge amount of money.

I agree with the risk associated with people you barely know but IF you are smart enough you'll pick someone who is less likely to fail in your team.That is of course another very rare set of skills, to know what to pick and how, but we are assuming that the single founder has that ability. Perhaps I am too confident on this one because I almost never fail in hiring (no arrogance intended) but with the homework done and that "thing", the chances are much higher to withstand that kind of pressure.Now that I think about it, it's probably a cultural thing. Your criterias match the US market more which is understandable and indeed those relationships are hard to maintain but "internationally speaking" you can find what you're looking for, easier.

Perhaps my second statement was misunderstood. No way you guys created the YC application form to eliminate talent. That wouldn't make sense. The intentions were positive but formed some kind of barriers for some applicants. It's like going hunting with a good weapon to catch a good prey (and you do catch some)when there are better weapons at your disposable. So I'm not saying YC is not successful because it would be stupid to say it. What I am saying is, you can significantly improve the success/failure ratio by taking into consideration other indicators as well. You are losing money anyway but you don't know it. Who knows what startups you missed/are missing until now that could've brought you more money than those that already did.Why swim in a small pool when you have a bigger one at your disposal. Also the YC app form reflects jury's mind.

Hiring an employee and finding a co-founder are distinctly different on multiple levels.

I agree but we are talking about cofounders.Maybe I missed a new message from yesterday.

I agree on that. When something is already started it gets harder to sync to that same sort of idea.

What is the percentage of founder breakups these days? We talking 20% - 30%? What's worse... a bad co-founding relationship with moderate traction or a technical solo founder who is about seeing early signs of hockey stick growth?

I would have guessed the exact opposite, that early-stage investors behave like binary classifiers who've been tuned to make a huge tradeoff of lower recall, in exchange for higher precision.

Well, he did say "talent", not "people"