Harj Taggar is a former partner at Y Combinator, the tech accelerator that launched a number of successful startups including Airbnb, Dropbox, and Instacart. He's currently the cofounder and CEO of Triplebyte. Taggar said he and his YC partners placed a high value on learning what applicants did in their spare time. The YC application still includes the prompt: "Please tell us about an interesting project, preferably outside of class or work, that two or more of you created together."