When it comes to the applications and the fear of missing good startups, I think the biggest bottleneck is how many groups they can interview.
If I'm not mistaken, for W2012 they interviewed 180 groups and accepted 65. That's 36% acceptance rate, but it shouldn't distribute evenly. If the applications were properly graded and the acceptance rate didn't get very low for the lowest graded applicants who were interviewed, then they need to increase the number of groups they interview. I guess that's the case, since pg previously commented that for S2012 they'd probably interview 270 groups. The "problem" is that for every new batch they probably get more applications (and most likely of higher quality), so this might be just playing catch up.
Maybe one day an Anybot robot will perform a preliminary interview so they can scale :)
Alas we are in fact going to be playing catch up. We got about 50% more applications than last time, so interviewing 50% more startups will put us exactly where we were before.
Maybe this time we'll do a perfect job at the reading stage. Not likely, but we can always hope.
I saw your tweet that applications this cycle seem unusually good. Hence with 50% more applications and 50% more interviews, it seems that YC didn't scale when it comes to mitigating the risk of missing good startups. Unless of course the applications are graded perfectly - I'm sure you've been working to improve that. I'll let you know how you did on April 16th :)
3000 applications this time?! do you remember by name every founder from last batch? ' cause that's the line that I would draw in the sand re:scaling. Of course it is just me, as 500 startups prove that this criteria is arbitrary.
If I'm not mistaken, for W2012 they interviewed 180 groups and accepted 65. That's 36% acceptance rate, but it shouldn't distribute evenly. If the applications were properly graded and the acceptance rate didn't get very low for the lowest graded applicants who were interviewed, then they need to increase the number of groups they interview. I guess that's the case, since pg previously commented that for S2012 they'd probably interview 270 groups. The "problem" is that for every new batch they probably get more applications (and most likely of higher quality), so this might be just playing catch up.
Maybe one day an Anybot robot will perform a preliminary interview so they can scale :)