We’re trying something new at Y Combinator this cycle. We’ve recruited four YC alumni to be part time partners:  Loopt founder Sam Altman, Posterous founder Garry Tan, and Justin.tv founders Emmett Shear and Justin Kan.  They’re going to do the same sort of work regular YC partners do advising startups, but only 1/5 of their time.

They’ve already been working with the summer batch, and it looks like this experiment is going to succeed.  The part time partners are the new founders’ peers, and this gives their advice an immediacy we can’t duplicate.

This may sound corny, but they also make YC a happier place.  We’ve known these guys for years (Sam, Emmett, and Justin were all in the very first YC batch in summer 2005) and have been through a lot with them.  They’re good eggs, and it’s nice to have them around.