My suggestions: 1. If you sell dev tools or sell to startups, YC gives you a great captive market in your peer group. They are also highly motivated to make "y

My suggestions: 1. If you sell dev tools or sell to startups, YC gives you a great captive market in your peer group. They are also highly motivated to make "you scratch my back, I scratch yours deals." 2. If you have no connections to VC or a spotty resume, but your team is highly motivated, YC gives you those connections and overcomes the resume. 3. If you don't care that much about your success in this particular company but want to be a serial founder, being ex-YC is good. 4. If you are not self-motivated, it may be your only hope of developing the habits you need. Otherwise, ~10% for $500k is probably a bad deal, especially for an AI company or a company with any traction at all. Applied late once to YC with an idea (not a great one) and got rejected, probably because of solo founding.