While that's a good point and a great advantage of YC, did you only try one other investor?

I have met with four VCs/early stage investors in NYC just by responding to blog posts or e-mailing in to contact me posts. I have obviously e-mailed and attempted to contact much more than four, but if you want to meet people the best way to do it is connect with them in a non-generic way via their blog, office hours, whatever means they prefer.

It's obviously not incredibly easy, but every investor knows the importance of dealflow, and it's getting harder to pre-screen for early stage deals (except using YC), so if you are persistent enough I think you can definitely get in front of the right people.