Your comment is very emphatic, but you didn't rebut either of my points:
* 120k will barely pay the fully loaded cost of a single engineer
* A good freelancer can generate 120k above living expenses in a year
Your response was "the fully loaded cost of an engineer is irrelevant". That's a weird argument, given that the cost of engineers dominates the expenses of early-stage startups.
That's cool and all, but what matters to a very early stage startup isn't the cost of hiring an engineer, it's covering the founders' living expenses and whatever business expenses arise (which may be very small).
You know this, so I'm not sure why you're off on a tangent about things that don't normally apply in these situations.
There was a long comment here, but I found a better way to make my point:
If I gave you $120k to start a company with 1-2 other people, and you had no other funding commitments, I don't think I'd be changing your odds all that much.
But I have no trouble believing that when YC gives founders $120k, they are changing the odds significantly.
Well, that's a whole lot of repeated assertion, and I respect the effort, but you're not making a great case for yourself.
It would help if you read my comments more carefully. The one you just replied to was particularly simple. Almost the only thing it says is that being a part of YC improves the odds. But the 120k isn't what's doing that.
Right, I just deleted what I could, which I tend to do when I disagree very strongly with the community here on some specific point. I emailed you answers to your remaining questions, happy to continue there.
* 120k will barely pay the fully loaded cost of a single engineer
* A good freelancer can generate 120k above living expenses in a year
Your response was "the fully loaded cost of an engineer is irrelevant". That's a weird argument, given that the cost of engineers dominates the expenses of early-stage startups.