Having been an alum before, I feel confident in saying, as hooande mentions in another thread, that the program itself is unlike getting invested in by any othe

Having been an alum before, I feel confident in saying, as hooande mentions in another thread, that the program itself is unlike getting invested in by any other investor. If you get funded by other angels or VC's, you have little real relationship built beyond that of you with the partner or angel. On the other hand, at YC, when we needed help with our Series A, we got to talk to James Lindenbaum of Heroku, who taught us the ins-and-outs. When we needed to launch, we could talk to Alexis Ohanian who created Reddit (and interviewed us) and knows a thing or two about launching consumer sites. YC batchmates help each other and pay it forward when we become alums. Few people do it these days for the money itself. One trend we see of late is companies who have already raised seed rounds, often from already prominent angel investors, opt to go through YC because it's a multiplier on their ability to execute -- they're more motivated, they focus more on the right things, have access to a hugely powerful network of alums, make deep lasting connections with batchmates, and then get a multiplier on their valuation at Demo Day. I don't see age as the determining factor. Even for people who already have networks (I was an early engineer at Palantir, Stanford grad) it was useful to greatly increase the number of smart people I knew and trusted. (See Metcalfe's law.)