[nawitus]

Everyone seems to compare "doing YC" to "not doing YC", which is a false comparison. YC can easily be better than not doing anything, but that doesn't mean it's even close to the best alternative. You could've sold 4% of equity for x million $ and used that to grow your business, for example.

[wiwillia]

I see what you're trying to say, but money is often not the issue - it's the connections and expertise that are so valuable. In my humble, and admittedly limited, opinion the network and community and shared experience/expertise that YC brought far outweighed any million dollar investment we could have taken (and no investor would have even considered giving us millions).

We ended up raising millions (about $22M in the last year), and I don't know if it would have been possible without YC. All our investors and intros came through the network we built while in the program.

Hope that makes sense, of course this is all my opinion and you can evaluate and come to your own conclusion - I just wanted to share my experience and perspective!

[swampthing]

You can still sell equity for cash as a YC company - many do, in fact!

As an aside, I think your numbers are a bit unrealistic. Even if you were to sell 4% for $1m, that's a $25m valuation. That's definitely higher than what most YC companies are worth prior to entering YC (and even right afterwards).