The biggest change is in the volume of applications. We've dealt with it by getting more partners, and relying more on alumni reviewers.
BTW, Harj acts as a catch-all only for the late applications. He reads on-time applications just like the rest of us.
I don't know yet what effect the Ronco/Yuri announcement will have. It probably won't change how we rank applications.
All the other new YC-like organizations don't currently affect what we do at all, that I can think of. A while ago we complained because some of them were giving people exploding termsheets that expired before the recipients had a chance to come to their YC interview, but that practice seems to have stopped. Now everyone seems to coexist peacefully.
Do you know whether the new one month gap between YC acceptance and techstars acceptance will be a problem? E.G. Will the offers explode in a month? In not, when typically?
TechStars is running programs 5 times a year, so it's less relative anyway. According to http://www.techstars.org/schedule/ there is a batch of finalists notified one month on either side of the YC interviews.
BTW, Harj acts as a catch-all only for the late applications. He reads on-time applications just like the rest of us.
I don't know yet what effect the Ronco/Yuri announcement will have. It probably won't change how we rank applications.
All the other new YC-like organizations don't currently affect what we do at all, that I can think of. A while ago we complained because some of them were giving people exploding termsheets that expired before the recipients had a chance to come to their YC interview, but that practice seems to have stopped. Now everyone seems to coexist peacefully.