You need both (or one person who has both characteristics).

Just curious, how often do you interview a founder that has both characteristics? I've met a few people like that, but it's definitely a rarity.

We often interview people who have both to some degree-- i.e. are both formidable people and good hackers. It is of course much rarer to meet someone who is as good as each of those two at the part they were best at.

I'm rather inexperienced in all this startup stuff, but I thought the main idea of YC was investing into people, not particular projects, since projects sidetrack, change and pivot all the time and people either rock or they don't.

Considering this, I think both of them would get accepted.

You're both assuming the point got across. Reading Damien's post, I got the impression he didn't really get to convey what he thought was the right points because he "kept getting sidetracked."

Doesn't matter how good of a hacker you are, if they haven't heard of you or what you do, you still have to impress. I've known a lot of gifted hackers that sound like buffoons when they get sidetracked and a lot of mediocre (but generally very successful) coders that don't get phased by anything.

I think Damien and crew can and will get their pitch down and find a funding source in the near future. My money's on this one being one of YC's shoulda's.

I believe Redpoint Ventures invested 2m in Couchio in 2009, the company Damien is CEO of.

We would have funded that company. Our problem with the company we saw in 2006 was that Damien didn't have any cofounders.

They did. It is said on this very blog: http://damienkatz.net/2009/12/relaxed_inc.html : I, Jan, and Chris are building a startup around Apache CouchDB and Redpoint Ventures has invested $2 million. Pretty cool huh?