What Happened to YC?

  Incidentally, we also hope that this deal will encourage more founders of any age and from every demographic group and geographic location to take the leap into the startup world, apply to YC, and build their own successful startup.

This is a rare example where I see an "equity" thing like this making sense with little downside. One one hand, I think YC might be cooler if it offered less money and gave more support of other kinds. But that means that only funded or independently wealthy startups could do it, which probably doesn't achieve the fund's ostensible aims of searching for the best ideas / founders. So more money means people don't have to worry about money as much, and YC gets access to more deal flow

Related links:

PG 12 years ago saying average was $17,500 per startup

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UacbJ72dluU

Last batch count was 240:

https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/meet-the-yc-summer-2022-bat...

FAQ saying current standard offer is $500,000

https://www.ycombinator.com/faq#covid

Heard in an interview that it was due to the much more competitive climate, inflated seed valuations, and an overwhelming number of applications.

I think YC knows better than you do. If you think you're so smart, then you start your own incubator and see how that goes. Maybe you can get a multiple unicorn company by starting someone off with $1. That's realistic.

It's not a mystery, they explain it right here: https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/ycs-500-000-standard-deal

They have more money now, and $17,500 doesn't get as far as $500k in terms of burn.

my experience has been that you now need to be really well networked with YC partners or are already generating 1MM+ in revenue to have a chance at being accepted, which really should not be how YC should work.