""It's such an unfair advantage." referring to @ycombinator >> what a great time we live in where young people have tools like this."

http://twitter.com/BrianNorgard/status/24136354265

I read this tweet and thought very quickly that no - YCombinator isn't an unfair advantage at all - it's something much, much less totalitarian.

Unfair advantages imply zero-sum games, that somehow the winners and lowers pit against one another in a game of deft and wit.

However, the beautiful thing about what Y-Combinator does and what their startups do is contribute in a way that is nonzero - everyone wins.

These seed-stage startups are of the type that they rarely "compete", in the purest, man-on-man thought of the word. The nature of YCombinator makes this pretty much impossible - such incremental sums of money would make it highly unlikely that they could compete with anything -- other than maybe a milk stand.

Instead, they solve problems and make people's lives better. Sometimes they contribute to zero-sum solutions, getting acquired by other companies, but mostly, their product and service offerings are based on purely zero-sum principles - unique web apps and add-ons that make functioning that much easier - and often, that much more fun.

So, to Brian Norgard and others who believe Y-Combinator to be an "unfair advantage", I say - no. I say, thank you, Y-Combinator, for being the advantage that all of us - not just the start-ups - get to benefit from.