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Read a little more carefully. He didn't say YC guarantees success, nor does he believe that. (I'm one of his cofounders, and this came up).

You're correct that patio11 didn't say that but I think it's helpful to remind people that the power law still exists. It's really easy to fall into the trap of survivorship bias and I'm sure there are plenty of folks out there who would benefit from being reminded that "... no founder should delude himself or herself that being part of [YC] guarantees success ..."

A denial worthy of a top flight attorney. He implied that by this paragraph:

"You're a mortal lock on raising a round subsequent to Demo Day at a valuation which will make angels weep while happily investing. You have preferential access to every connection which matters in Silicon Valley, including top-tier VC firms, a pool of interested employees, potential acquirers, and vendors who you need good relations with. Comes with one free TechCrunch article, too!"

So we have:

"mortal lock"

"make angels weep"

"preferential access to every connection which matters"

"top tier VC firms"

"one free TC article".

What an oddly noisome comment.

Nice SAT word (I didn't learn that at the school that I attended).

You find being called a top flight attorney offensive?

As a Level 15 message board arch-nerd, I love that word, because it's a sort of two-fer: it suggests "noisy", which is really what I'm getting at, but actually means "annoying" --- "noise" and "annoying" having apparently different roots.

I felt like my response was dispositive. I'm telling you straightforwardly that's not what he meant, and I have good reason to believe I'm right. Your rebuttal actually ignored the substance of my comment and instead launched into a tedious semantic tea-leaf-reading exercise.

"Noisome" seems like the right word. :)

You only need 1 investor - so long as they have enough cash for your needs and fall under the "good/adds value" category. To me, that should equal a hurrah rather than a sigh.

In a past life, I built a company with backing from a single investor. If you're going to go down the path of building a company that requires outside financing, you can never assume that a single investor has "enough cash" to meet your future needs.

Your investor could be a billionaire and there are still countless reasons he or she might not be able or willing to provide additional financing. Just a handful: legal problems, health problems, travel, divorce, death.

You don't drink the kook-aid. You take advantage of every advantage.

The problem is that many of the things founders assume to be advantages really aren't, or they're not as a significant as believed. In business generally, a lot of people overvalue and place too much emphasis on "advantages" that don't directly influence the metrics that matter, like sales, cost of customer acquisition, churn, etc.

Being in the YC family is clearly a meaningful advantage for many/most startups.

You're entitled to believe whatever you'd like, but if you want to make a convincing argument that being a part of YC is a meaningful advantage, you'll have to explain why, as I previously noted, the success of YC startups basically follows the same power law distribution you see across the Valley.