I would really love to see an option for people who are not in this group.
I'm sure many people would. Your proposal appears to be that YC do this exact program, but with a 200k+ grant instead of 12k. This is obviously not feasible, given that these grants are being awarded for little more than an idea.
Founding a startup is a huge risk, there's no way around that. If you're at a point in life where you can't afford risk and instability, it's going to be tough to start a startup.
Frankly I don't really get the "startups are only for young people with no obligations" problem. You have a wife, and kids, and a house, and hopefully these things bring you great joy - the prototypical obligation-free startup founders have none of them. Should we be looking for ways for young startup founders to do the family-building stuff they are missing out on? Maybe set up a fund to give them a down payment for when their startup fails and they could have been saving up with a paycheck for a few years? It just seems like...sometimes in life you have to choose one thing or the other.
They currently add value to their current enterprise. That doesn't mean that they will also add value to some other enterprise, i.e. a startup.
The percentage of experienced professionals why waste the grant might be smaller than the percentage of just-out-of-college teams who waste the grant, but the difference might not be as large as to justify $200k.
Some would say that the fact that a patent is sometimes worth 10s of billions is a flaw in the current legal system. While true, I don't think YC is in the business of funding patent trolls.
I'm sure many people would. Your proposal appears to be that YC do this exact program, but with a 200k+ grant instead of 12k. This is obviously not feasible, given that these grants are being awarded for little more than an idea.
Founding a startup is a huge risk, there's no way around that. If you're at a point in life where you can't afford risk and instability, it's going to be tough to start a startup.
Frankly I don't really get the "startups are only for young people with no obligations" problem. You have a wife, and kids, and a house, and hopefully these things bring you great joy - the prototypical obligation-free startup founders have none of them. Should we be looking for ways for young startup founders to do the family-building stuff they are missing out on? Maybe set up a fund to give them a down payment for when their startup fails and they could have been saving up with a paycheck for a few years? It just seems like...sometimes in life you have to choose one thing or the other.