For those that don't play the game you have allies(who are called blues) and enemies(reds), and neutrals(greys) TEST(reddit) and Goons(SomethingAwful) always would joke about their ability to shoot blues(allies) for fun. But it would always require a trip to Vile Rat to sort it out.
I didn't know the man personally but I have respected him for a long time in a game that I really enjoy and from that I honestly feel personally connected to him. I have a lot of friends in this game who actually are personally connected to him.
Eve is fun, eve is empires with consequences, eve is taking a risk and losing it all. Something I think the traditional HN crowd would enjoy.
RIP Sean
And condolences to your family and your many friends around the world and all the people that have seen your messages, watched your diplomacy and looked up to your lead.
EDIT: for people up voting me for this. I appreciate the thought but I don't feel comfortable collecting virtual points for this. Instead of an up vote please just post a reply.
When you interview a startup and think "they seem likely to succeed," it's hard not to fund them. And yet, financially at least, there is only one kind of success: they're either going to be one of the really big winners or not, and if not it doesn't matter whether you fund them, because even if they succeed the effect on your returns will be insignificant.
What this means is that YC is not looking for sustainable businesses, but homeruns. Which is entirely fair, that's the business they're in.
But you and your startup are in a different business: Your measure of success isn't the same as Ycombinators. If your startup ends up making you a million dollars a year you will probably be very happy and rightfully call yourself a success. But as the post points out that won't be enough for YC since they need to fund a lot of other startups that will inevitably fail out of their minority share. Thus they need a much bigger success.
If you get turned down for YC it might well be that your idea is just a sound business idea that YC doesn't consider just crazy enough that it might make them a billion dollars. But that doesn't mean that it won't make you a million.
Paul, you're sounding like a venture capitalist who is worried about whether he can find investors for his next fund.
I would posit that the people whose opinions you should care about are potential founders; and that their primary concern is themselves, not the performance of a fund (oops, I mean class) as a whole. You're damn right that it would hurt YC's brand if 70% of each class didn't survive past Demo Day -- because for an individual founder, success is pretty much binary, and having a 50% chance of becoming a millionaire is more attractive than having a 5% chance of becoming a billionaire, despite the 100-fold reduction in mean wealth.
You may be in in the business of farming black swans, but if they're all you worry about you'll find that all the swans end up laying their eggs elsewhere.