Raising money from YC is the same as any from any VC: you need traction or to be part of the VC’s network. If you don’t already have a bunch of users or know a bunch of VCs, you won’t be raising money.
YC: you submit an application with about 30 inputs. One of them has to deal with traction, and it's clearly a very important one. If that's not looking good, you have 29 ways to make up for it. It's not easy, but every batch has startups that had 0 traction when they were admitted, so clearly it's possible. At the end of the day, you're guaranteed that a group of people will read your application and will discuss it internally.
Non-YC: to make an apples-to-apples comparison, I'll assume you have no prior relationship with the VC you're trying to reach. So you'll need an intro, which is nothing else but someone else taking on the burden of vouching for you. So someone at some point needs to believe that you're onto something. But if you don't know anyone, how do you get to that point, especially if you have no traction? Good luck with cold emails in that case!
> If you don’t already ... know a bunch of VCs, you won’t be raising money.
True for VCs, not true for YC. Just look at all the startups from India and Africa that got into YC and are killing it. You think they were super well-connected with the YC network when they applied?
If you have traction, YC or any other VC will invest in you.
If you have great relationships with VCs, YC or any other VC will invest in you.
You seem to be trying to make the case that YC offers some sort of unique lift to that of other firms and I don't agree, they gate on the same criteria as everyone else.
YC allows you to fill out an extensive application and then they guarantee you that they will read it several times across several people. Compared to what you get from VCs, that's a unique lift.
