This is the mistake. Advice is easy to find, but it varies in value.
This guy can correctly value our money. It's worth the same as everyone else's. But he has no idea whether our advice is good or bad, and if good, how much better it is than "average" advice, whatever that is.
If those ideas and themes resonate with you, you have an idea of what benefits you'll reap from the support of the YC staff.
[1] Work hard to create wealth. ( http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html )
I could never talk about conversations I'd had with specific startups, because the more useful the advice was, the more precisely you'd be able to identify the startup.
With YC you know there's a solid support infrastructure.
Another point to note is that there is an incentive for all of the Y-combinator startups to say they had a good experience, because if they said otherwise they might be burning the bridges they built (which they would not want to do, even if those bridges are not worth what YC charges for them).
I agree advice varies greatly in value. Bad advice is worth less than zero because it obscures the good.
I think YC's advice is generally quite good. The thrust of my argument was that advice and connections are more commodities than most investors believe.
Naval Ravikant, a YC speaker, says to assume investors are mostly money, as does Marc Andreesen:
http://venturehacks.com/articles/dumb-money
http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/the_truth_about_1.html
"Odds are, nothing your VC does, no matter how helpful or well-intentioned, is going to tip the balance between success and failure."
Ironically, because you distribute a lot of advice freely in essays and events, and because YC's connections are high-profile enough to work outside YC, it's less necessary to join YC for them.
To me, the other entrepreneurs in YC are the biggest value-add and worth a premium. I don't argue YC should match angel terms, just come closer to them than 1/10th.
I mention all this because I'm a fan of YC and want to see it succeed. The #1 criticism I hear about YC is the terms.* Investing a bit more is a good way to address that and one that now seems feasible. Otherwise it remains an obstacle to some high-quality founders and a way the increasing number of incubators can compete with you.
To use a mixed metaphor, I know I'm preaching against the choir in the lion's den, so I expect skepticism. I intend it as a friendly perspective.
-Mark
* #2 is that YC ideas aren't "big" enough, but that's mainly a VC complaint and one I mostly disagree with, anyway.
The effect of VC advice is in principle measurable. That would suggest an empirical approach is possible to determine whether YC is really 10x better than a 'regular' angel. Of course you'd have to consider the effect of how being chosen by YC might affect the performance of a startup. Also, whether YC is better at picking 'winners' than a regular angel.
YC is really the first angel/excubator to sell themselves on the idea that they are mostly not money. They have to, because they don't give a lot of it.
If I can bring in 3 great advisors and give them 1% equity each then I am ahead in terms of cash investment and advice.
Your conclusion is your assumption.
If startup is so freaking awesome it was accepted by a rich Angel and the YC, it can "buy" all that stuff for $38,000 from you.
The question of whether non-monetary YC experience is worth that much money is a hard one and it would probably involve calculating probability rate of success at YC vs Angel, non-monetary factors (well-being), externalities (with all the benevolence), and other things.
On the other hand, there is $38,000 just laying around, waiting for you to grab and multiply your runway by ~5 (50,000/12,000).
It seems like startup-advice blog-type sites have only sprung up since then.