Though the interesting thing is, Y Combinator is interested in basic income. That's effectively like crowd-seeding, which makes all the 'cut out the middleman' stuff more practical.
If you're expecting 'disruption' and embracing it, and you see disruption coming for your own livelihood, the sophisticated response is to try and find a place for yourself in the new situation, rather than stop things from changing at all. In that light, Y Combinator looking at ways to cut out SV incubators could be prescient.
It's like with me: I run a very functional small recording studio as part of my business, and it's well on the way to handling the live recording of traditional bands and their instrumentation. Yet I'm a lot more interested in finding unusual ways to support electronic genres (a strikingly different skillset).
It's funny here too, because I would assume that crowd funding would put you on a more conservative path. I like the Idea of taking $100k seed money an building a company that turns a profit. Not one that IPO's and makes us fuck you money, just one that pays back my investors at better than market, and pays my employees.
But you're signing up for a lot of work, not a sprint, and that's kinda the antithesis to 'changing the world' without making a profit then going to IPO.
I don't want to gamble on something, I want to build something with a less sophisticated valuation model where the revenue plan is clear from the start.
'Never ask a barber if he thinks you need a haircut'