[HN Gopher] YC's founder-matching service helped medical records...
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       YC's founder-matching service helped medical records AI startup
       Hona
        
       Author : mstats
       Score  : 9 points
       Date   : 2024-05-04 18:48 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
        
       | neilv wrote:
       | Why is Birthdate a required field on the User Profile required
       | for YC founder-matching?
       | 
       | (Gender is optional.)
       | 
       | Also, once you get past that User Profile, to the founder-
       | matching Profile, the very top of the first form says "Your
       | profile will get much more attention if you add a picture." Why
       | implicitly endorse that, which has undesirable historic baggage
       | of prejudice and unfairness?
       | 
       | In hindsight, I realize that the prominence of schools on the
       | profiles (and the text field using the example of Stanford)
       | didn't jump out at me, maybe because it's common on a US resume
       | (unlike gender, birthdate, or photo).
       | 
       | Maybe other people will have additional "what?" reactions to
       | other things in the forms.
       | 
       | Edit: On the matching profile form, it won't let you submit the
       | form and proceed until you add a photo. ("Please fix the errors
       | below before continuing.") I was able to get past that by
       | uploading a blank image, but I'm not going to proceed further if
       | it seems like current YC thinking isn't a match for me.
        
         | bdw5204 wrote:
         | A recent PG essay[0] was revealing about why colleges are so
         | prominent on those profiles and more generally about YC's
         | thinking:
         | 
         | > At this point I'm going to tell you something you might not
         | want to hear. It really matters to do well in your classes,
         | even the ones that are just memorization or blathering about
         | literature, because you need to do well in your classes to get
         | into a good university. And if you want to start a startup you
         | should try to get into the best university you can, because
         | that's where the best cofounders are. It's also where the best
         | employees are.
         | 
         | [0]: https://www.paulgraham.com/google.html
        
           | neilv wrote:
           | I have to partly disagree with him there.
           | 
           | My schools included MIT and Brown. And I generally really
           | liked the students at both. And I would hire many of them.
           | 
           | But I've also hung out in other circles that attract smart
           | people, where I'd selectively hire first, before prioritizing
           | random people from the fancy-pants schools.
           | 
           | And I've worked too many places where some of the smartest
           | and most accomplished people came from BFE schools.
           | 
           | Also, note that undergrad programs have gotten insane with
           | the gaming and the hoop-jumping. Even worse than when it was
           | helicopter parents merely sending kids to prep schools, SAT
           | prep, and the checkoff extracurriculars (e.g.,
           | "volunteering"). And that insanity can select for what you
           | _don 't_ want to hire, to do actual work.
           | 
           | If you want "How to Start Google [where everyone focuses on
           | the entrance exam, and then on gaming their promotions]" then
           | you absolutely should hire Stanford students, who had to
           | exercise very similar thinking to get into Stanford at this
           | point.
           | 
           | Or, if you want to run a startup investment scam, where you
           | need to apply some similar thinking of the _appearance_ of
           | accomplishments, and knocking down ducks lined up for you.
           | 
           | But if you want to solve problems, or build something that's
           | not just headed for a financial exit, then Stanford-track
           | kind of thinking seems probably counterproductive.
           | 
           | Imagine getting a new hire at an early startup, and they
           | innately think that their job is to knock off sprint tasks,
           | and have other appearances of performance.
           | 
           | And when you try to explain thinking about the organization's
           | goals, and that their job is to help the team collectively
           | achieve that... they think you're just spewing empty
           | platitudes, like they were taught to spew for college
           | application personal statements and job interviews.
           | 
           | You would've been so much better off hiring the scrappy
           | person from the community college who hasn't had Stanford-
           | track BS baked into them since grade school.
        
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       (page generated 2024-05-05 23:02 UTC)