Yes, you've missed the point. I'm not asking how much you'd have to be paid to throw away that experience forever. My answer to that question would be a lot m

Yes, you've missed the point. I'm not asking how much you'd have to be paid to throw away that experience forever. My answer to that question would be a lot more than $350k. I'm just asking how much you'd have to be paid to throw away your current progress and roll the dice again. If you're confident in your abilities, then that shouldn't be all that frightening. Also, if you're in it mostly for the warm fuzzies, then YC is not the only game in town. You could find a similar experience by going to a top grad school, or mentoring at Mathcamp (http://www.mathcamp.org), http://www.mathcamp.org), or interning at Google. I'd rather do the SFP than any of those things, but not by such an enormous margin that I can't put a dollar value on it.