I was doing help desk, but I was pretty plugged into tech news. I was on hacker news and saw the initial post here by Austin himself. It seemed like a good idea and much better then what I was doing in the time. I was frugal and had expenses saved up to go a year at it. At the time I knew YC was involved and I think it did lend an air of legitimacy to a super new concept.

Not OP but I also attended a part time Lambda School cohort around 5 years ago and the YC association was huge for me.