[man_bear_pig]

More interesting than double-blind test is if each of the yc partners play fantasy startup.

a) each pick his/her top 5 yc companies per batch that they think will be most successful (and main drivers why) b) each pick his/her bottom 5 that they think will be least successful (and main drivers why) c) each assign the value of each of the 5 most successful companies 5 years from now. (and build a bridge as to how that value will be achieved).

and then run some fun numbers on your predictive capabilities.

when i ran "c" for my private equity firm on all investments made over 20 years in various vintages and industries, i found my answer as to why my job of building complex financial models was pretty much worthless number painting. very low predictive ability in value drivers and financial projections being met (these are later stage businesses, too). also, i realized that i should get out when every newer vintage had a larger % of the driver of value stemming from leverage (i.e. financial engineering) than ebitda outperformance.

[mdda]

NB: There is a lot of hard-earned wisdom distilled in man_bear_pig's comment.