I imagine what I’m missing most is how he handles those huge obstacles. We all can turn on sheer force of will for a set amount of time but keeping it buoyant in the face of huge obstacles is another matter entirely.
YC is like a doctor which takes a 10% cut of the lifetime earnings of every baby they deliver. Adding some value, yes, and some kids won't earn very much, but the wealth earned by the new human would have almost certainly been earned regardless of the doctor's skill. And this doctor happens to deliver half the babies of the entire state of California.
The cult part was thanks to PaulG. As long as that continues, YC will be successful.
OpenAI was the result of a fear that big tech. was going to monopolize all the fruits from recent deep learning advances, because they had all the data and the money. That was the obvious new hotness to get into. Proprietary AI was an existential risk to VC livelihoods.