Sorry to harp on the pedantic point, but your parent's point still stands: you said you never once paid for access, when in fact you seem to have exactly once paid for access, which is different. The point that paying for access makes sense only if it is through YCombinator may be a good one but it's a significantly weaker one than you were originally making. Instead of an unequivocal "no", you're saying "no, but...", which is more complicated.