"Make something people want" is fundamentally advice about being empirical, instead of assuming you already have all the answers. The equivalent for investors would be "Let founders teach you what people want."
That has been the m.o. at YC from the beginning: that founders both should and can understand their users better than we could.
That rule cuts both ways. If we see signs founders don't understand their users as well as we do, it's a reason for rejection. But if founders can teach us things about their users, based on real data, they become very convincing.
I can remember several very vivid cases of founders teaching me what users wanted. With both Airbnb and Twitch I was initially incredulous. But they seemed to know what they were talking about, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt.
If I had to decide whether or not to fund a startup based on a single question, it would be "How do you know people want this?" Which is basically a more specific way of saying "Teach me about your users."
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