YCombinator is the only seed funding firm with a comparatively well-known name. I'd bet that nearly all people applying for any seed funding apply for YCombinator. It's got a bunch of well-known companies, well-known people, and it's located in SF, which is where lots of startups want to be. It's got a competitive advantage that's very hard to combat. Date fixing is one of the methods that other funders can use to give themselves a fighting chance.

I wonder if there are tenants of the funding system itself that a company could change to become a completely different sort of funder. Could a program be as small as YC and yet work in a radically different way? (If any of the seed funders do work radically differently, then it's news to me.)