IMHE as part of multiple YC-backed founding teams, this is a new tone from YC.
In the past they have been very condescending of anything that doesn't involve trying to be a unicorn as fast as possible. There's even a video in their catalog deriding 'lifestyle' (ie - non-vc, non-unicorn, non-blitz-scaling) startups.
It makes sense given their business model, but I found it distasteful that they were advising young, impressionable entrepreneurs to take on more risk and to move away from their core competencies: greatly reducing the entrepreneurs' own chances of success in order to give YC and their associates another lottery ticket for a billion dollar payoff.
As a bootstrapped founder I am biased but given everything I have seen and heard in the last couple of decades I think the tone has shifted from success at any cost to creating sustainable/profitable businesses.
It also helps that in many ways creating a startup has been commoditized. Specifically, it's now cheaper and easier to use various online tools to get a new business up and running with little upfront cash/time than ever before. This trend will continue.
That's not to say this is true for all startups but it is true for the majority of them.
The good old days of being able to exploit starry eyed kids for their ideas in return for taking the majority of their equity is hopefully behind us.
In the past they have been very condescending of anything that doesn't involve trying to be a unicorn as fast as possible. There's even a video in their catalog deriding 'lifestyle' (ie - non-vc, non-unicorn, non-blitz-scaling) startups.
It makes sense given their business model, but I found it distasteful that they were advising young, impressionable entrepreneurs to take on more risk and to move away from their core competencies: greatly reducing the entrepreneurs' own chances of success in order to give YC and their associates another lottery ticket for a billion dollar payoff.