a) Almost all of the other incubators are just awful. Either they are predatory, ineptly managed or simply not well capitalised enough to offer a competitive product.
b) YC is able to rest on its laurels i.e. they can/do market how well AirBnb, Stripe etc have done. And so their funnel of talent is by far the best.
c) That said, YC is the worst I've ever seen it. And Garry Tan is mostly to blame although it's been trending downwards for a while. It's now as if Jake Paul ran an incubator: very hype driven, cynical, focused on easily exploitable young 20s males.
I might regret saying this here, if it causes a negative change, but I find that a lot of the text materials YC and startup school have retain a lot of PG-era advice and can be a goldmine of wisdom. Most of the negative influence of post-PG operation has been on the video and audio content marketing side of things (and of course, the accelerator itself). Perhaps it is just harder to have certain things come across as sincere in text format.
If you look at the batch data [1] it is very clear that there is either an investment thesis or some inherent bias in how they choose startups. Since Garry Tan took over it is now heavily favoured towards (a) SF based, (b) young, (c) AI centric.
And if you look at the partner YouTube videos you see why. There is a concerning lack of diversity in how they see the world i.e. they are all very much the e/acc types.
I have an issue with the way they continue to market themselves as being altruistic and a defender of startup founders everywhere rather than your run of the mill predatory, self-interested SF VC.
