It would work in the sense of causing good work to get done. It wouldn't necessarily make much money. The real problem though is that it would be hard to find

It would work in the sense of causing good work to get done. It wouldn't necessarily make much money. The real problem though is that it would be hard to find someone to run it. If you want to make a YC of x, it has to be run by a domain expert in x. That works for x = startup, because YC is close enough to a startup itself. But for most other values of x it wouldn't work so well. The best painters would rather spend their time painting.