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.