My impression of YC's marketing is an appeal to hubris (and often, the hubris of youth). Most will fail, but none believe it will be them, and in the process, they position themselves outside of an environment in which they'd otherwise have access to people with technical and sustainable business experience from which they can learn what (and what not) to do.
I'm a lot happier having spent 10 years building a sustainable company doing what I really want to do, than I ever was at exciting startups during the v1 .com bubble.
Getting to that point, however, required putting in a lot more than 3 months -- or 3 years -- of backbreaking effort.
sama's response is correct. There's no real downside to doing YC when you're young. If you succeed, you get rich. If you don't, you can probably find work at another YC company that is succeeding. If you can't, then having YC on your resume will probably help you land a job at another startup. No YC founder will ever go hungry.
There's a long, long road between not "going hungry" and maximizing your individual potential, and anyone that survived the first .com bubble unscathed knows that the latter has far more lasting power.
I'm a lot happier having spent 10 years building a sustainable company doing what I really want to do, than I ever was at exciting startups during the v1 .com bubble.
Getting to that point, however, required putting in a lot more than 3 months -- or 3 years -- of backbreaking effort.