Why-combinator?
As I've moved forward after the sad realization that I didn't, as of yet, make the y-comb cut I've been surprised at how in built my resistence is applying with others.

As I've thought about this adversion it's led me to realize that a large degree of what attracted me to y-combinator is not so much the brilliance of it's concept, not even of it's execution. I mean up to the moment the vast majority of the world doesn't have a clue what y-combinator is nor do they know the companies it's been midwife to.

What draws me fundamentally to y-combinator isn't my dire need of funding if I want to make sizable progress any time soon, nor is it the knockout field of support and potential capital sources. It's not the press y's received nor is it the cool things it's led me to want to learn or do. It's not even the true principles that pg harps on such as iteration, relentless resourcefulness, and shower think. It's not even the potential to work along side a vetted group of hungry soon-to-shake-the-foundations-of-the-world entrepreneurs.

I think I've nailed down what has me so spell bound and wanting, like few things I've ever wanted...

...it's that I know him.

I know PG.

Me and Paul Graham are like this --> & (closest aproximation I could think of to intertwined fingers)

Okay granted I don't really 'know' him. Not any better than I 'know' Glenn Beck or Diane Rehm.

What I mean to say is that the transparency, the many articles, the concistency, everything together leaves me, some noob hacker wanna-be trying to take his dad's dream business innovation to reality, feeling like I know the man and that he's real.

I haven't even yet read all the essays nor have I gotten to read Hackers and Painters (dying to though) but I feel like if I was to sit down and talk with PG right now that I'd be able to talk with him like I talk with my very best friends, my father, or even a clerical head in my church.

I feel like if I could talk with him we'd be instant friends.

I can't say anything approaching that about any of the angel pad founders profiles I've read. Not to say anything against any of them, they may well be just as congenial to conversation and friendship, I may even have as many or more ideological correlations with them as I feel I have with PG, but the truth is I just don't get anything approaching the same vibe from any of them.

One could try and say that y-combinator's success has roots in the very principle put forward by PG when he describes the compounding effects of the aura, or lack thereof, that can come from who invests in a start-up. One where the successful enjoy a kind of multiplier in the offers and valuations available to them by virtue of their preceived clout and reputation. But I really don't think that such is the case.

'By their fruits ye shall know them' to quote an oft controversial book. But I really feel that's the case.

PG isn't necesarily a saint, but by setting himself apart to the point where I feel like I got to know him cuz we sat by each other on the same flight and talked the whole trip makes him close enough in my book.

Good luck to the rest of the would be "next y-combinators". Put yourself out there and hope you can be read like an old friend.