From the way it is worded I would bet it is two MBA guys, who never wrote a line of code in their lives (but know a bunch of acronyms), expecting to find a guy, who would build the whole thing singlehandedly for 5% of equity max? Are you freaking kidding me?

This attitude clearly displays no respect for technical abilities involved building a web company from zero. They are looking for a brilliant code monkey who would sit quiet in the corner and code away why they are making the world shattering "business decisions".

In my view they should get to know another acronym: KMA.

This is an epidemic among business types. They very often just don't have the imagination to know whats involved.

You could build a giant rocket, complete with moon lander and robots to build a habitat once it arrived and connect it to a giant red button that said "launch"... You'd still have to tell the MBA what button to push, and after he did, he really would believe that he had single handedly colonized the moon.

All of the engineers would think him a slimy weasel for making such a claim after all of their hard work. He would just think that they were jealous because while he was busy with the hard, visionary work of moon colonization, they just sat around and fiddled with rocket parts all day.

"This is an epidemic among business types"

While I agree with your basic premise we're not all like that. I've heard the exact same thing from engineers - "hey I built this great product and it should sell itself, how hard can it be to market and sell it?

It's common to dismiss the work needed to accomplish a task in an area you are unfamiliar with. Especially if the people doing the task are good at what they do. Then they make it seem easy. This goes for both tech and biz people.

What's thrilling is that the tide is beginning to turn among technical people. It's our responsibility to figure out what we're worth and what we can do. If we don't want to be project-managed and MBA'd for little in return, guess what - we don't have to be! To me, this is the essence of what pg's essays have been saying (and what YC is doing).

The News.YC headline for this is a touch confusing. When I clicked on it, I thought the OP was summing up the article as "Don't look for startup cofounders." In fact the article is "don't look for cofounders via an unreasonably demanding Craigslist ad."

don't -> don'ts

This sounds like the good old "I have an idea, and I'll give you 5% if you build it" fallacy.

A tell-tale sign of someone who doesn't know what it takes and where value is added and wealth created.