> If not, YCombinator picks the winners pretty well.

Impossible to say without knowing what the selectees would've done on their own. A lot of the winners might have opted to stay in college, for example, if they hadn't been picked. Simply being selected is automatically going to influence the result -- having all that support behind you makes it more likely that you'll succeed.

There's a certain amount of being made, not born, so to speak; you might think of it as being a bit like the Spice Girls.

    *Cough*