I am not making the leap because I don't have enough reserve money saved up.
It is really hard to justify quitting and not bringing in any money regardless of how much you have in the bank and how much you spend per month.
Ie. is 24 x monthly expenses enough?
Even once you have enough saved up shutting down that influx of cash is hard.
I'm developing the app now, and it's an app that people would (hypothetically) pay for. So cash should flow within 2-3 months(based off prev experience of selling things online) after I launch.
and if I need a cash infusion I can consult/contract for 1 - 2 weeks.
To be more specific, my idea hasn't changed, I have personally grown (before I felt YC would 'validate' my idea) and I don't believe that I would be accepted (in other words I don't want to be rejected again). I plan to 'just do it' myself and try to use the resources (my own money) and contacts( people here in the news.yc community) available to me to create something valuable that people will pay to use.
I conjecture that these kinds of people will tend to be more risk averse and that the group will have a better median result (and higher success rate).
But startup successes can be massive and a better strategy might be to chase the blockbusters with younger people.
15k is enough for 3 students for 3 months. Somebody that has been working for a while, has probably a lot more money than that.
I have friends that saved money, quit, and now are doing their startup and living off their savings.
The only thing that YC might be usefull is some free publicity, and contacts, which are very useful especially if your product is of dubios value.
YC would probably like to think its value-add is far beyond the money it provides.