The social network wasn't innovative - the clean, uneditable interface with a social graph was. The search engine wasn't innovative - the targetted ads was. The

The social network wasn't innovative - the clean, uneditable interface with a social graph was. The search engine wasn't innovative - the targetted ads was. The operating system wasn't innovative - the mass market and adoption of it was. These three companies were absolutely innovative, just not on the surface product you consume. People are missing my point; it's ridiculous to say a blanket statement like "Google, Facebook and Microsoft did it without YC, what say you, entrepreneur!" when you're evaluating them when they are already billion-dollar companies. It's the same thing as someone trolling to say "I don't have to go to college cause Bill Gates didn't!" So when you're evaluating a company that is already successful, of course they won't need the help because their products are already so compelling. Now if you say "that's not why you're getting down-voted...these products weren't born awesome, they could have used YC then" well then this argument is still flawed. Why didn't Facebook need something like YC? Well it was Feb 2004, before YC even existed. None of these companies HAD a YC to use, so it's not a comparison you can even make valid. Incubators didn't exist for MS, Google, Facebook, Apple, AOL, Netscape... Of course these people needed to hustle. But they definitely sold themselves - Microsoft was bootstrapped, and Facebook had 100,000 members in 3 months until Peter Thiel caught wind of their efforts and approached THEM. Can everyone use the help? Of course. Facebook did it without YC and could do it again without YC. 99% of entrepreneurs are not in that situation.