Y Combinator is completely out of reach for most people. There are limited slots and tens of thousands of applicants. It makes the whole selection process essentially pseudo-random.
Also, Y Combinator is not popular because it is successful, it is successful because it is popular.
It's no coincidence that Y Combinator operates the most popular technology news link aggregator in the world which all the big corporate tech executives read. This significantly affects the odds of success for startups which join Y Combinator. They choose who wins and it doesn't matter who they choose. If you are selected into YC, it's like winning the lottery.
They should do an experiment; filter out all the obvious scam applications then for all remaining applications (tens of thousands of them probably) run a random number generator to select startups based on keywords that YC likes. I bet the success rate for that batch wouldn't be very different from previous batches.
Also, Y Combinator is not popular because it is successful, it is successful because it is popular.
It's no coincidence that Y Combinator operates the most popular technology news link aggregator in the world which all the big corporate tech executives read. This significantly affects the odds of success for startups which join Y Combinator. They choose who wins and it doesn't matter who they choose. If you are selected into YC, it's like winning the lottery.
They should do an experiment; filter out all the obvious scam applications then for all remaining applications (tens of thousands of them probably) run a random number generator to select startups based on keywords that YC likes. I bet the success rate for that batch wouldn't be very different from previous batches.