If you had to fill out a YC application for ViaWeb back then when you initially had an idea and a working demo, how do you think you'd have fared?
For example, while it was very obvious that your team had high skill (given your academic credentials), you didn't have domain expertise in online commerce.
We did have domain expertise of a sort: we were experts in generating web sites, which back then was a comparatively rare type of knowledge.
I'm pretty sure we would have invested in us, because we had a very clear thesis about what needed to be made, and ecommerce would have seemed a promising market.
For example, while it was very obvious that your team had high skill (given your academic credentials), you didn't have domain expertise in online commerce.
Would you have picked you? :)