All established institutions are on the other side of the deal when you engage with them; wether it is an Ivy League school, IB, Big Tech or VC's. They all take something.

There are some valid points, people might not be aware of but overall the YC deal still seems better than most alternatives. I think he is discounting how hard it is at that early stage, that first capital needs to come from somewhere. Also YC founders seem to be disproportionately have softer landings if they don't go supersonic Unicorn IPO. Maybe you don't stand out in the top 10 of your batch and instead get aqui-hired and only make 800k/yr.