[technotony]

Curiously, you just listed a lot of good reasons to do YC. Until the last few weeks of the program you will be encouraged to focus on your business except for the Tuesday evening talks and short meetings with the partners. As this is remote you won't even have to waste time traveling to Mountain View from wherever you live.

Then at the end you focus on demo day which I promise you is the most concentrated and efficient way to meet investors and raise a round on the terms you are looking for (caveat being I don't know how it works remote). Then it's back to grinding on the company. The further along you are by demo day the easier and more efficient your raise will be.

Is that worth 7%? Lots of founders think so. In our batch we had a company that had more than $8MM revenue previously that went on to raise millions on an uncapped note that converted really high. Pretty sure it was worth it to them.