I know Rene from the Forecast team and while I also had an initial negative response to the term "hack" everything they say in the application process makes sense.
Really, they just wrote a hack to find YC alumni, then see how they were connected to them to get some intros.
I think trying to meet as many YC alumni as possible makes sense and if you can get a recommendation from one of them even better.
In today's world of so many applicants and noise, I think showing your due diligence in talking to other YC alumni and then having them vouch for you is a bit like a pre-emptive interview process and valuable to the YC application review team.
It's kind of like back at my days at Google when I would interview people and they didn't really even have much understanding of how Google made money (i.e. the online advertising business) I would almost have to immediately veto the candidate.
I think filing patents defensively makes sense. I witnessed this firsthand at Google on the Android team as the patent wars started and because most Googlers are anti-patent, Google was at a severe disadvantage to MSFT, Apple, etc.
Ideally, we would just reform patent law to mitigate this but outside of that, I think it makes sense for companies to incentivize their workers to file patents "defensively".
When I said "pay attention to this because it is your future" I was specifically thinking about Google. I basically guarantee that somewhere down the road Google will abandon their "only for defensive purposes" stance.
What makes you think this won't happen with Google?
They have a very valuable patent portfolio, and there is a very high likelihood that Google will at some point experience problems similar to Yahoo, Microsoft, Kodak, etc.
Once that happens, shareholders will be clamoring for that asset to be put to use - if management hasn't already done so to prop earnings up.
And that's why it's so pervasive - the only practical defense to patent lawsuits is building up your own portfolio of patents for defensive purposes. But, since it is highly likely that your company will face situations that require you to utilize that portfolio in an offensive way, your previously defensive patents will require other companies to acquire their own 'defensive' patents. Ad infinitum.
Google sometimes attaches patent licenses for non-aggressors for code they've open-sourced (see: WebM). That ties the hands of a future management: the relevant patents are only useful defensively. Anyone not suing Google (or a downstream user of Google's code) for patent infringement related to that code can take advantage of the freely available patent license.
Of course, they're not doing that for everything (e.g. PageRank patents), but to the extent that they do this for the patents they intend to use defensively, they might avoid this problem.
As an advisor (on the giving side) and an entrepreneur (on the receiving side) I totally agree with this.
It's tough because people are nice, but as an entrepreneur, I learn the most from the negative advice I have gotten from mentors (I've been ripped apart many times).
So now, when I give advice, I give my true honest opinion if I don't think their idea will work. I just preface with it saying, look, this is only one opinion, and not to take it personally.
And when I get ripped into, I always listen and ask questions, but I don't necessarily let it discourage me.
I think you can always tell by people's expressions if they are holding back. If you think they are, you should ask them: "It seems like you have some reservations about this, what are some of the risks you see?"
With that, you'll be able to get more insight, and you just have to remember that there's tons of risk, it's just up to you to decide how risky each situation is (and how to mitigate that risk).
