Y Combinator's Paul Graham sits down with Jason at LAUNCH Festival 2014

I can't answer that but pg talking about what may have been Sendgrid was quite interesting along those lines ▶ this video

I think it was in this video with Jcal ▶ this video . Not sure at what point in the video, but PG definitely gives up lots of great success tips, so worth watching it all. As far as the black swans, I could be wrong on this, but my understanding is that YC has maybe 10 partners all giving a grade on the apps coming in (apparently started this after they missed SendGrid). Im not sure if the 1400 alums initially flag or what, but even with the 10 partners grading, their odds of finding black swans get worse because black swans don't look like winners to most people - they are essentially counter intuitive, crazy ideas that don't appeal to the majority in the beginning (or maybe the founders are not Stanford drop outs or ex Googlers, which further sways the majority to give higher grade to what is more obvious. Thus pushing down more potential black swans below the interview cut off line. So the more partners you have grading a particular startup, the more partners you have trying to cover their asses and not fuck up. So the safer choices will get more interviews - and safe choices don't usually result in black swans. Not sure if I'm making sense here, but maybe the proof is in the pudding in that some of their biggest wins are Dropbox, Reddit, and Airbnb...all relatively early in YC batches when there were fewer partners making choices.

I thought about that too when I watched that documentary. You should check out what pg thinks of Aaron in this recent video: ▶ this video at around 7:42

No way can I parse 10 hours of PG video. Just rewatched the Calacanis interview and some of Charlie Rose. I vividly remember him speaking about the study, but can't remember if it was an interview or just a speaking engagement (possibly Pycon 08). Here is him talking about MBA's whipping their meek rent-a-programmers during the interview[0] which is the best I can do. If anyone remembers what video it is in, or better yet, actually knows the (i believe harvard business school) study, would be super interested. [0] ▶ this video