It's interesting to see pg's opinion about what is important in founders evolve over the years. When I applied to YC in late 2008, I was told by alumni that YC was "looking for smart people." Although he's talked about discipline and determination as early as May 2004 in his essays those words were most commonly found next to the words "talent," "skill," or "smart," as if the two qualities were equally important.
Now it seems that YC has learned empirically that determination is the more important predictor of success (see intro to The Anatomy of Determination).
A concern for YC might be: with this new emphasis on determination, it might become the next thing applicants try to "fake" to get accepted?
Maybe they've figured out that there are plenty of smart people, but not as many truly determined people. Determination then becomes the limiting factor once smartness has been established.
This reminds me of Outliers when Gladwell talks about concert violinists.
"All of the violinists had started playing at around age five, and they all played about two or three hours a week during the first few years. However, around the age of eight, an important difference began to emerge in the amount of hours they each practiced. By age 20, the stars in the group had all totaled 10,000 hours of practice over the course of their lives; the “good” students had totaled 8,000 hours; and the future music teachers just over 4,000 hours.
What the research suggested was that once you have enough talent to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works."
Being in Silicon Valley, I meet smart entrepreneurs all the time. Many of them come from places like Stanford. I think many pass the basic threshold of intelligence. In fact, this is more than passing considering that it doesn't take an elite education to create a good company IMO.
Obviously, not all these people succeed and so the other factor behind success is likely to be what you said: determination.
I think pg in his essays is saying something stronger, which is that determination is actually more important than intelligence.
And although I tend to agree, let me play devil's advocoate for a moment.
"We learned quickly that the most important predictor of success is determination."
A more important predictor of success could be, ambition. It's different from determination because with ambition you need to make it big, but with determination you just have to have it.
Determination is the wrong thing because to make a startup succeed you have to want it, but you also have to want to make it big.
In fairness, pg touches on this when he says,
"I don't know if it's exactly right to say that ambition is a component of determination, but they're not entirely orthogonal. "
According to the interview, pseudo-determination happens often within a ten minute interview. Yes, they're looking for people with that quality but I don't think that's their goal.
They simply don't have enough data yet for an accurate model of recruiting.
Now it seems that YC has learned empirically that determination is the more important predictor of success (see intro to The Anatomy of Determination).
A concern for YC might be: with this new emphasis on determination, it might become the next thing applicants try to "fake" to get accepted?