There are tons of international startups in YC including many successful ones. And YC has well over a decade of experience helping international founders navigate all the barriers including visa issues. Don't let this stop you!

Edit: I want to emphasize this. Being an international founder is not an obstacle for getting into YC. Hundreds of founders have done it, from all over the world. Probably thousands at this point.

Not a YC founder, but this is factually not true. YC allows Delaware, Cayman, Canada, and Singapore corporations [0].

Pre-empting the accusation that "cayman companies are about tax dodging": Cayman companies are a great fit for heavily international businesses that do not reside in the USA, but that want to be governed as if they were, because cayman corporate law is basically delaware's.

A good example is Nubank, which is a cayman corp that does most of it's business in LatAm.

The reason a company like this should not be a delaware c-corp is so that, in case of an acquisition of the companies assets, the holding company doesn't have to pay usa taxes (which is reasonable, since the company didn't have usa operations to begin with).

[0]: https://www.ycombinator.com/deal

These are still incredibly limited options for locating your company.

YC has apparently been helping many founders get the O-1 visa.

And there are plenty of services that allow you to manage US companies remotely.

O-1 visas are pretty darn hard to get by. Most start-up founders would lack the national or international distinction and that too way before even they have started their journey.

Those having such kind of distinction would already have going too good for them (unless they're just good on the paper) that it wouldn't make much economic sense for them to relocate elsewhere.

Receiving money from one of the most well known VC firms seems like a pretty good distinction. I know people who received O-1 with far less (no tricks involved)