I found that amusing seeing as the second most recent video in their series, "Should Your Startup Bootstrap or Raise Venture Capital?", spends most of its time making a strong case for why VC isn't right for the vast majority of founders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D81y-kh11oI
Not to mention, most YC exits are usually via acquisitions, and often between YC companies.
Can you expand? How does this relate to the parent comment?
By making raising VC seem specific and exclusive, they make it seem high-value and make people want it more.
It is telling people that the object at the top end of the price sheet is not really for them, vs saying “yes, everyone should buy this.” The former increases interest, the latter increases suspicion.
In the past they have been very condescending of anything that doesn't involve trying to be a unicorn as fast as possible. There's even a video in their catalog deriding 'lifestyle' (ie - non-vc, non-unicorn, non-blitz-scaling) startups.
It makes sense given their business model, but I found it distasteful that they were advising young, impressionable entrepreneurs to take on more risk and to move away from their core competencies: greatly reducing the entrepreneurs' own chances of success in order to give YC and their associates another lottery ticket for a billion dollar payoff.
It also helps that in many ways creating a startup has been commoditized. Specifically, it's now cheaper and easier to use various online tools to get a new business up and running with little upfront cash/time than ever before. This trend will continue.
That's not to say this is true for all startups but it is true for the majority of them.
The good old days of being able to exploit starry eyed kids for their ideas in return for taking the majority of their equity is hopefully behind us.
Many founders are not very impressive but what they have is confidence (however blind) in their ability to do the thing.