Well put. Geography is vastly underestimated as a limiting factor. Not simply for $ – living in the Bay Area is barely feasible for a young person without dependents – but also the many quality-of-life trade-offs that come with a move. I hope this is a successful experiment.

As a partner at YC for over 10 batches now, I've worked with lots of great founders who have come from all over the country, and many make having families work. The cofounders of MongoHQ both moved to Mountain View with their families (with kids) during YC, and it was a crowded house but a productive one too. It can be done.

There's also nothing that says you absolutely have to stay in the Bay Area afterwards. Many founders head back to where they come from if that's the right thing for the business.

what does the bay area offer that requires someone to uproot and come out there just for a few months? what if the location they are already in is ideal for their business? for instance i live where we have 3 cent per kwh power, moving to SF to work on anything power intensive will increase my startup costs 5 fold at a minimum, and that is power alone, let alone everything else being 5x more costly. the insistence that people come to you is strange to me.

Moving to an area specifically for your startup, even if you were told to do so, can really show your dedication (not just by saying it). You are proving that you are willing to do whatever it takes. I've known many who have moved for the 3 months @ YC and then have rightfully moved back... I don't think any of them have regretted. YC may be looking for someone who can make it work, if there is a will, there is a way. THAT is what they are looking for.

There is a method to the madness. They have proven it.

One problem is that, for a lot of industries, San Francisco is the wrong place to be.

If you want to be in fashion-tech, for example, you want to be in New York (or possibly London). And, there are lot of other industries concentrated in specific areas around the world.

Limiting to San Francisco is limiting your industry. Sure you can get a ton of web developers, but you'll lose access & relationships to the REAL industry insiders that matter for your vertical.

I think that can be true, but YC has a model that works for them, so it seems ok to me to not try to cover every industry in the world. Some of them are quite different, to the extent that YC's networks and expertise might not be as immediately useful anyway. For example Houston has a lot of energy-technology startups, especially in oil & gas, doing anything from the "hardware" side to analytics to GIS type stuff. But it's basically its own world that has little overlap with the Bay Area startup world. Different investors, different types of customers, different production challenges, different employee demographics, etc.

YC has proven an accelerator works when teams move to be part of it. That doesn't prove that investing in companies that are based elsewhere and take part remotely doesn't work though, or that moving was a contributing factor to success, or that founders who are willing to move are demonstrating a greater level of dedication (just a different sort of dedication).

To know whether remote will work YC needs to try it.

(Mind you, even with YC's intake, it's likely you'd never see a statistically significant result either way. There's too many variables and not enough samples.)

About living expenses, there are a few possibilities to save a little money, from couchsurfing (seems unreal, but I know a guy who lives through CS almost 2 years))) to housesitting (I saw a house, a cat sitter was needed, about in 20 miles from SF for 2 months). Or, the most popular, a flatshare - that's what we're going to do))

This, i'm really glad to see Ycombinator reaching outside of their current sphere.

I'm a (remote) early employee at a YC company and see the value the founders got from full YC but I'd simply never consider it for a personal project because of the move.

I have no interest in moving personally (as a father, home owner and someone who really likes living in the mountains) but also most of my personal projects focus on groups of people for which the bay area is not particularly enriched.

I could see applying for this fellowship in a few years once I feel i've done my current commitments justice though I'd want to be open about having no intention of doing the full YC.

For me the cloud credits would be a bigger financial incentive then the 12k as most of my ideas would involve a lot of initial data processing.

I think there are tradeoffs here, right?

For example: YC knows the Bay Area well, their roots are strong where they are situated. If you're not in their area of expertise, you're potentially missing out on a lot of their resources right?

On the other hand: There's probably a lot of opportunities YC is missing out on because they understand that there are people out there that cannot make that long-term commitment.

In the end, this is why I understand that they're running this as an experiment. And I hope that their hypothesis proves to be that remote YC companies work so that they can apply this to their flagship program.

Same, I have a family and obligations in midwest USA. It's not feasible for me to move to the bay area for 3 months.