A lot of strings attached among other being able to give up your life for 3 months. And a expectation and push to 100x. And a lot of others.

YC is simply not shaped for the Mittelstands and honestly really not compelling. At all.

You sound like you are making a lot of excuses, but I actually deeply agree with every negative point that you make.

As you are pointing out, the risk of being a founder is just not worth it for you or most people, financially or socially or personally. It rarely makes sense even if you are already wealthy or privileged: even given the advantages you have correctly identified, the expected outcome is failure. Without those advantages the rewards for the risks are even worse. Calculate the median return[1][2][3] implied for the majority of ycombinator founders and it is approximately zero.

Selection bias is a bitch.

[1] https://jaredheyman.medium.com/on-600b-of-y-combinator-start... [2] https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/01/the-meeting-that-showed-me... [3] https://80000hours.org/2014/05/how-much-do-y-combinator-foun...