Will Manidis

Why is Y Combinator's reputation significantly better than 500 Startups or Techstars? What did they do early on & as they grew that compounded the value of their returns & reputation?

Much larger scale, and Dave McClure I would assume? YC only takes a fraction of the companies per batch, and didn't franchise to various cities with debatable quality.

Were 500 and Techstars always less selective than YC or did they feel like they had to have a higher acceptance rate to "keep up" & didn't realize quality lowered in the process?

Agree abt franchising to diff cities; does seem like it watered down the value for Techstars.

When you say "Dave McClure" do you mean his Me Too creeping? Before people widely knew about it, 500 was still were clearly second banana to YC, so I'm asking abt before that was widely known.

I don't have have an actual answer to this-- but the perceived value of techstars definitely dropped when they opened a franchise in every major startup hub (and denver?). Hard to tell re: 500 right? YC also had a few year headstart (2005/8) vs 2011

Yeah I asked this after looking up the founding dates -- was surprised that Techstars started in 2006!