I think it's useful to hear the stories. When you're a 1-3 person startup early stage rejection is harder to get over, and it helps to know others have succeeded regardless.
Separately: I'm not saying this to denigrate YC or anything; they get thousands of (at least moderately) serious applications and probably 10x that that are nonsense, but the interview we got had interviewers that seemed pretty unfamiliar with the sales processes of b2b companies that sell to midmarket or enterprise. I assume the people who did the 10 minutes with us were luck of the draw. And major props for promptly responding and saying no thanks; lots of vcs we talked to fucked around with responses and/or two even ghosted us.
So, YC for dev tools or b2c stuff? Probably great. YC for sales enablement or tooling for midmarket or enterprise sales teams? It may be very hit or miss. (Just like any vc.)
In my founder "generation" at least, many of us got excited and felt heard reading PG's old blog posts. A YC rejection can feel more personal when you've lionized them for years.