Anybody who build their business on nights and weekends while working a fulltime job is someone who has shown a great deal of commitment. I've done this, its damn hard... its hard not to let the startup wither away because you're too busy with your day job, and its hard not to loose interest after even 3 months of spending all your time on your job or your other job with little time for anything else.
Show me someone who built thier company that way, and I'll be interested in putting money in.
YC seems to attract and be geared for, kids in college who want a summer job with the prospect of glamorous VC money afterwards. It doesn't matter to them that they might get a raw deal-- cause they don't have much invested in it in the first place. And ther's nothing wrong with that.
The problem is that these kids are so adamant and smug that this is The One True Way To Do A Tech Startup-- that making these foolish short term choices in pursuit of a billion dollar dream is obviously right... and building a net worth of $10M by building a $3M/a year real buisiness is a "lifestyle" business-- a failure in their eyes. They are naieve and strident and there is no getting thru to them because Paul Graham has them mezmerized by the tune he's playing.
YC is a great summer camp for entreprenurial college students. But all the bashing of other ways of going about it that they do are so misguided... and the focus on only high risk, low probability business models seems misguided.