Here are several YC stories by individual, recent founders:
https://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2014/07/11/month-y-combi...
https://about.gitlab.com/2016/01/06/our-y-combinator-experie...
http://blog.yesgraph.com/changed-y-combinator-7-years/
https://80000hours.org/2015/08/why-is-80000-hours-in-y-combi...
https://medium.com/@mattangriffel/the-value-of-y-combinator-...
That was a good read. The one competitor he didn't foresee was the GoogleDoc / Office360's of the world. Who needs any sync, when it all works in your browser. Obviously that wasn't fatal and for things that can't run a browser, Dropbox is important.
YC is still a great focusing mechanism and equalizer. If you haven't raised money before, it's fantastically helpful to go through YC. It helps get past all the status BS with investors and lets you worry purely about how your business is doing.
Austen from Lambda had a really succinct reply in favor of still doing YC. Context dependent but tldr: focus on important metrics.
https://mobile.twitter.com/AustenAllred/status/1011505226304...
YC is located in south bay which is expensive, but not much different than many other cities in the US. If comparing to a suburb it will not be cheap, but there are no VCs in suburbs.
An extra few $k in rent is not going to make a difference in the longrun.
http://www.businessinsider.com/dropbox-y-combinator-applicat...
Are there any founders from recent batches than can still vouch whether YC is still worth it?
With insane SF rent prices, one has to burn a big chunk of that 120k in 3 months by just trying to stay alive.
Add that to the fact that YC batches are pretty big right now. Do you get much in return other than the YC bragging rights?
Would love to learn about the experiences of existing/past founders.