Why should prestige matter?
Too many Corporate Ladder Climbers have used YC as a resume point to get that next promotion at a corporation b/c they view it as more prestigious than things like a graduate degree.
That's not a positive for YC, it's a negative. Corporate Ladder Climbers block out those that actually want to do a startup.
As long as the quality of the program remains high, and that is entirely dependent on the quality of the partners, then the program can scale.
Seen people list on linkedin, twitter, and others places the batch they are in without listing the company it was with. Who cares what we tried to build look I was in Ycombinator!
As long as the quality of the program remains high, and that is entirely dependent on the quality of the partners, then the program can scale.