This is not the case. Most companies YC funds do not come with alumni recommendations. Which in a way is surprising -- with 2000+ alumni, it's not that hard to meet one.

Source - YC partner.

Hi tlb, thanks for your unique perspective! I didn't mean to imply that an actual alumni recommendation in the traditional sense was the norm, akin to perhaps a letter of recommendation for grad school. I admit, my comment "knowing someone" was quite ambiguous, so you probably thought that an official recommendation was what I implied.

Not true. At least not for this YC alum. I didn't know anybody. I learned about YC after stumbling across pg's essays. Decided to apply. Got an interview. I didnt even know there was an official notification day for application acceptance. Got accepted. No connections to anyone. Summer 2013.

Have a great idea, a great team, show some traction. Traction probably doesn't have to be revenue. Just find something that shows other people want what you're building. Great team means you're the best team for your idea. Not necessarily Ivy League school or Google/Facebook/Amazon employment.

I'm pretty sure this isn't the case. Applications definitely get judged on their merits. (Source: I'm a YC alum)

I don't think your lying, but I have to ask you this...do you believe it's genuinely possible to decipher startups merits alone from just an application?

PG has often stated that thegdon't fund the idea, they fund the team (or person).

Sam Altman has told me specifically why they didn't fund us the myriad times we applied.

Our founder split made them worried / didn't fit with their thesis. That seemed to be the only thing, based on our back and forth.

So, keep in mind that YC is looking for something very particular. It does strongly suggest however that YC is very open to taking teams they don't know as long as they fit their official and unofficial criteria. They make a serious effort to be transparent but they are also oberworked and are pretty much a black box to most startups they reject. They surely were for us, I just got lucky to get an answer.

When we make an accelerator, it'll also be based on a certain way of doing things. But it'll be very different. We believe that standardized platforms make a huge difference - YC has one as do other accelerators. But we have an actual software platform on which others can build their apps. It would be as if FB ran an accelerator program to develop new businesses on top of the FB platform. Our program could have actual measurable metrics to determine who is funded further and who is not.