Without knowing how many applications meet each criterion, advertising how many YC companies meet those criteria is more misleading than helpful. If 95% of applications are from pre-revenue companies, then the 50/50 split between acceptees which are with/without revenue would indicate that companies with revenue are 19x more likely to be accepted; if half of applications are solo-founder, the fact that only 8.5% of accepted companies have solo founders indicates that they are at a huge disadvantage.
Frankly I expect better than this from YC. You guys have the data, and don't need to be actively deceptive.
Thanks for the feedback. With this post I was hoping to clarify misconceptions that might be used as reasons not to apply. I tried to avoid doing an analysis that could be interpreted as a playbook for getting into YC because it would result in the same issue: "If I'm not like X I shouldn't do YC."
Anyway, thanks for the feedback and it's cool to know there's interest around YC data.
Counterpoint: if the data strongly suggest a set of profiles are far more likely to be accepted it is perfectly rational to evaluate one's own profile first against that information in order to assess the effort required to overcome differences and evaluate the risk.
Perhaps passively so? Colin has a point that it is hard to interpret this data honestly without an idea of what pre-acceptance (applicant) numbers look like.
If the goal is to dispel myths about what's required to get into YC, then this is not the data to accomplish that. However, if the goal is to show that exceptional applicants that do not fit the myths can be accepted, then sure, this data shows that.
By "actively deceptive" I included "knowingly posting misleading information". This is based on a presumption that they were aware of the base rate fallacy issue; maybe I was being too generous in that assumption.
Frankly I expect better than this from YC. You guys have the data, and don't need to be actively deceptive.