My point was to say that while we've done things to get access, like YC, which was wonderful and a massive exception to this rule, just about every other time we've explored an access opportunity, it's been a big miss.

Sorry to harp on the pedantic point, but your parent's point still stands: you said you never once paid for access, when in fact you seem to have exactly once paid for access, which is different. The point that paying for access makes sense only if it is through YCombinator may be a good one but it's a significantly weaker one than you were originally making. Instead of an unequivocal "no", you're saying "no, but...", which is more complicated.

Unfortunately life is complicated and does not fit into sound bites as well as we'd like.

I like my comment as it is because you get the second graph and realize even great sounding rules of thumb don't apply to everything perfectly.

You are right though, my point is made considerably murkier by the fact that "paying for access" for YC was a good experience. I could counter by saying we got a whole lot more from YC than that, but I think other folks get what I was trying to say.

to be a pedant to your point, OP never actually said he "never once paid for access"... he said "never once has anything good happened from paying for access". they're semantically different.

Maybe he paid for the part that wasn't access? Did you think of that? :)