Mr. Startup: Paul Graham, founder of YCombinator, and his "no asshole" rule

This low rate may also have to do with biases extant in engineering / sciences etc. Couple that with YC's preference for hard-core tech founders ( a perfectly reasonable delimiter ), these results are not surprising. You can see similar composition in YC leadership where Jessica is the only female partner ( link ) and from my limited understanding, she brings in a much needed balance to their approach. A system that produces great results should perhaps focus on ".. but by the content of their character " - Martin Luther King, Jr. This I think, pg emphasizes via this video

> Sorting people into bins: assholes and victims, is problematic. This is true of anything subjective. There are people (intentional assholes in this article) who absolutely _are_ assholes because it gives them pleasure - their ego or otherwise gains something from hurting others. Everyone in a company knows who they without needing to go through a labelling process. Ultimately it's a problem for leaders in a company, those that should be caring about the culture, to remove such people. Paul Graham described this long ago here - this video (starts at 4m20s) - a leader in YCombinator he makes the judgement calls.

Related links: PG 12 years ago saying average was $17,500 per startup this video Last batch count was 240: link FAQ saying current standard offer is $500,000 link