Skip the accelerator and go straight to seed funding via convertible debt. No need to give up any space on your cap table until series A, and you can probably raise more than $150k or whatever YC is giving these days.

Of course this discounts other benefits of YC, but those are arguably becoming less useful as the batches have been diluted with so many lackluster startups. At this point YC almost seems like something people do not for their startups, but for themselves. It attracts prestige collectors that are more concerned with how they look on paper than how they perform in reality.

Me too.

One possible option: no accelerator at all. YC doesn’t fund you that much, and you don’t need a demo day to pitch investors. The network and advice can come others ways too: from working for startups, and increasingly online (see YCs own startup school).