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A comment on Ask HN: What is Y Combinator's 'anti-portfolio' like.

Re:Ask HN: What is Y Combinator's 'anti-portfolio' like by bgnm2000 on Saturday September 05, 2009 @08:38AM (#806469)
I feel like this question is irrelevant. If YC looks at 1000 ideas, and thinks 100 are good - they still can't take all 100 (because they don't have the space/funding).

Therefore a company being rejected from YC may have nothing to do with whether or not YC wanted them. Sometimes its just about logistics.

Alas, I'm sure YC has rejected companies it knew would be successful, but accepted companies which were either more innovative/bigger market opportunity, or which they hoped would become even more successful.

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Re:Ask HN: What is Y Combinator's 'anti-portfolio' like by FreeRadical on Saturday September 05, 2009 @08:43AM (#806473)
But if a proportion of the other 900 companies are more successful that the 100 accepted companies, it provides some insight into the ability of YC to pick 'winners'. Particularly if a company that is turned down out perfoms a YC company in the same space/field.
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Re:Ask HN: What is Y Combinator's 'anti-portfolio' like by araneae on Saturday September 05, 2009 @02:02PM (#806826)
Not necessarily; it could be that YC helps companies become winners (which it certainly professes to.) But both YC's ability to pick winners and their helpfulness to the chosen few would be disproved if there was no difference between rejected and accepted applicants.
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