> speaking only for recent graduates I know personally well: ambitious students also want to be writers, for example. If only it were so easy as writing more makes you a better writer! So if you have to sit around and get life experiences that are interesting to write about (a good way to be a good writer), do you want to do that while working for Stripe, drinking kombucha and getting free lunches and being able to live in New York? Yes. You don’t want to do that while being an investment banker or a doctor or a YC founder.

But nobody's closing that option, are they? YC is simply offering another path.

There are different kinds of ambitions of course. Not all of them are about money, some are about creative fulfillment or family or whatever. That's totally true.

But it's not like anyone's yanking those people out of their kombucha-on-tap associate job and forcing them into YC.