Would love to know YC's real matriculation rate. I know of several teams that got accepted in and opted not to go, in part because of ballooning batch size and dilutive terms.
The YC application process in and of itself can be very useful for founders. It forces them to really think about what they're building and why it's going to bring value to customers.
Isn't it $125k/7% ? Which seems OK for pre-mvp or even pre-revrnue ? Worth it just for the network value?
Or is the selection so hard that most teams already have real traction ?