It Just Got a Lot Harder to Get Into Y Combinator

Acknowledging that it "grew too fast," Y Combinator chief Paul Graham says the high-profile startup factory is cutting the number of startups it accepts into its classes from a current 84 to "less than 50" for the winter 2013 class. Y Combinator has had an elite status in Silicon Valley, churning out startups under the watchful and experienced eyes of investors Graham, Paul Buchheit, Trevor Blackwell, and Jessica Livingston. How exactly do you give 84 startups the time they need to chat with veterans in the startup community, let alone fit them around one table for dinner? One of them, BufferBox, was just acquired by Google, and one of the few hardware startups in the class, Double Robotics, is gaining popularity for its sleek iPad telepresence devices.