Y Combinator Has Gone Supernova

If the casting director of the TV show "Silicon Valley" were asked to produce a canonical example of an applicant to Y Combinator's incubator program, she may well have come up with the guy strolling to the front of in a basement auditorium at Stanford on a mid-April day this year. He's a goateed bro in his mid-twenties, rocking a grey pullover hoodie, a brown stocking cap, and an eagerness to share his killer idea--Airbnb for parking! He's come to the Gates Computer Science Building to pitch it to the two interlocutors holding "Office Hours," where savvy veterans of the startup process dispense wisdom to aspiring Mark Zuckerbergs. The bro is clearly happy when both of them--Sam Altman, the head of Y Combinator, and Yuri Sagalov, a startup CEO who completed YC's startup boot camp in 2010 and now is a part-time partner there--express excitement at the concept. But Altman, a wiry 32-year-old who himself is wearing a zip-up hoodie, hits the brakes on the lovefest. "When is this going to launch?" he asks. The founder says the app is six months out. Steven Levy is Backchannel's Editor in Chief. Sign up to get Backchannel's weekly newsletter. "How about six days?" asks Altman.