Calm down. This is precisely how industries standardize. No one thought it was "sickening" when search engines pages started to imitate each other's blue title + grey descr + green url design. It was just an obviously good idea.
My first reaction was also, "hey plagiarism". But then again, on second thought, it'd be nice to have one application form to fill out, and then you just send them to different programs.
Before the days of standardized applications forms for colleges, it was a pain in the ass to fill out the same types of questions. I think it's rather lazy of them. However, since they're all going for startups, it's rather likely they'd ask a set of basic questions. It might do to have some sort of standarized basic set of questions, and then tack on one or two specific questions for that particular program.
I think there's a lot to be said for standardization, as you say. Founders who are just getting started have little enough time as it is, without having to come up with just slightly different answers to just slightly different questions. If that's their reasoning, they probably should have mentioned it, though.
There are plenty of me-too's borrowing from YC's model in an attempt to clone it. This company just happens to take the additional step of stealing from the YC application.
It's shady but it goes on. Be glad some light was shed on this particular misuse and skip these guys if you don't agree with their actions.
They won't hurt YC's brand and they won't injure the value of the YC companies. This type of thing -- whether an act of theft, laziness, or both -- only hurts the offender. Just looks at some of the other comments in this thread.
I'm with aristus... this isn't anything to get excited about.
Calm down. This is precisely how industries standardize. No one thought it was "sickening" when search engines pages started to imitate each other's blue title + grey descr + green url design. It was just an obviously good idea.
