Sure, that's a fair statement. I'm not saying that the lack of success so far is a knock against YC for hardware startups. Rather, the similar lack of success

Sure, that's a fair statement. I'm not saying that the lack of success so far is a knock against YC for hardware startups. Rather, the similar lack of success for software startups in YC at the same stage of development, and the subsequent success they did enjoy, is not a point in favour of YC's suitability for hardware startups. Hardware and Software startups are sufficiently different in their needs and life cycles that it would be specious to use the success of a particular program for the one as indicative of its suitability for the other. Similarly, the sorts of b2c startups that YC typically funds are sufficiently different from b2g startups like Palantir that I don't think you could claim Palantir would have benefitted from YC based solely on the experiences of b2c startups.