Yep. The thing though is that they can leverage their network to get the ball rolling for any companies they sign. That means it doesn't really matter if it's a

Yep. The thing though is that they can leverage their network to get the ball rolling for any companies they sign. That means it doesn't really matter if it's awesome or bad, as long as they decide to promote a company, people will buy it. Pretty much like apple products... so it's not rational anymore to go through YC. Do you think airbnb would have worked without YC? No. Would dropbox be dropbox today without YC? No. They are cool ideas because a large amount of people are using these products. And there were other alternatives prior to these companies. It's just that no one ever promoted them like yc did with their own companies. Otherwise they would be like any other products out there. There was an airbnb before airbnb I think it was an australian company. I came accross their website one day (pre-airbnb era) and was like WTF is that. So again, if a large amount of people buy, you'd most likely buy. YC has that marketing power. I think if you become a billion dollar company without going through YC, you'll become the next google or apple.