That's great, but just look at the profiles advertised on the front-page there: Harvard, Berkeley, MIT, etc. Nothing against them personally of course, but I really think this is the trend YC is going towards these days. It's the old school institutional prestige back, but this time it's blended together with SV startups.
> I got 3-4 emails telling me to strongly consider finding a co-founder
A lot of YC's advice is terrible, such as their advice on finding a cofounder.
You can easily tell when they give bad advice: ask them for their dataset. When they don't offer it, consider doing the opposite of what they tell you.
Now, some of their advice is great, when it is data backed an easily testable like Jessica Livingston's "I don't know of a single case of a startup that felt they spent too much time talking to users."
Now, what's a version of their "find a co-founder" advice that doesn't suck: "I don't know of a single case of a successful founder that wasn't building things all the time with many different people."
Don't find a co-founder or two, find dozens of "building buddies" who you just build shit with. Every now and then you can form a legal entity and be "co-founders", but the more important thing is you just create stuff together.
