Comment by lurker19
15 years ago
This is a good point, but to your original point: "invest in me just because I impressed PG (plus more good reasons that may be true but the investor cannot see)" does not fall into your category of "unbreaking things" like the rest, especially at the start of YC. By now YC has certainly built institutional credibility, but even that can be broken if one day PG turns evil and sells out the brand like Pyrex or show or a grade-inflating college.
Doesn't seem like in his best interest. His present model has been incredibly successful, and what he is selling is a pre-screened class.
I imagine that his applicant pool is becoming more and more qualified over time, giving him a graduating 'class' that is constantly improving.
His interest is actually the same as for any kind of certification, and that is to increase the number of people getting certified for as long as the certification is seen as having value.
Thus it is a little scary that every Y-combinator class is bigger than the previous one.
However he is also figuring out how to scale the model and provide more assistance. For example current graduates benefit from finer tuned screening, have more kinds of assistance available, better assistance (pg knows more than he did when he started), a bigger network to draw on, and save more otherwise wasted fundraising time.
On balance the result is that classes seem to be getting better, not worse.
However I guarantee that a point will be reached where the Y-combinator model can't keep improving and growing at the same time. At that point his personal financial interest will still be to keep growing the program. It will be interesting to see what happens then.