> “Can this be a $10 billion plus company?” like Airbnb and Dropbox
I have said it before and I will say it again: this nonsense is going to be the death[1] of YC. Airbnb/DropBox/Stripe/Twitch would not stand a chance getting funding from YC today.
They fell into the same trap that kills innovation like everyone else: as they grew bigger they started taking less risks.
> If 95% of applications are from pre-revenue companies, then the 50/50 split between acceptees which are with/without revenue would indicate that companies with revenue are 19x more likely to be accepted
> One thing seems increasingly clear to me: this way of building software is not sustainable. What can we do?
Waiting 530 days before upgrading and then only spending a day to upgrade what is effectively three major versions actually seems very reasonable to me.
They succumbed to credentialism. They traded hackers for MBAs. The proverbial John Sculley has fired Steve Jobs and taken over.