1 billion percent agree with this sentiment. It's all a trick. It's all perception. It's all egos at play that want to be validated by larger egos. You're a friggin fantastic coder. You can build something that YC will accept. And you're choosing to complicate your lives, introduce all these players you just met into your circle, etc. For what? Can you really not make a living off your programming chops to sustain your own startup on the side that increasingly takes up more and more of your time as it generates money?

If you're not trying to do that, it's solely because you have ego issues and your greedy. Your willing to take this huge risk of a shittier situation with lots of stress and other people telling you what to do to prove to the world how great you are and so you can attain way more than you really need. It's a false a conception of what will make you happy--cuz it wont. I can make $65k a year in the states and live an extravagant life-style, doing all the trips and experiences I want to. All while working primarily on my own stuff and doing minor contracts here and there. I worked very hard to get here and learn these lessons. I used to make way way more, but the quality of my life was worse. I used to pursue startups with partners, making some industry I barely care about more efficient. Now i work on my own project--which for all intents and purposes, let's just say it's a surfing startup. Everything I truly love is aligned with my career skills. It's not a surfing startup, but that should paint the picture. Most of all, I don't have investors down my back, partners I'm constantly disputing with, higher percentages taken away in taxes, and generally a million unnecessary people to deal with. And actually more importantly, I'm not building some bullshit like Uber which has nothing to do with my interests. I love to code, but i think if anyone loves coding more than traveling, hanging out with friends, being in the world, you have a problem. What I'm saying is: if you're building Uber, you don't love taxis, you just better hope you're solving interesting problems. And "interesting problems" is far less interesting than traveling to Machu Pichu with my girlfriend and taking ayahuasca in the Amazon (for example).

Programming is a means to an end, not the end in itself. Programming isn't life. It's far from it. Building software companies and the business side is even farther. Those guys are going to YC for ego and greed, and like 90% will pay the price and likely fail, whereas they could have something bringing them income and quality of life right now. They could already be at the end of the road and living in the now, i.e. having a functioning product that doesn't need to go even farther to be labeled a success. If they could live off their product right now, they would be a success. The route they're gonna go--as you mentioned--will lead to more and more rounds and likely never achieving a state they're happy with. It's the essence of the human condition and addiction. It's nothing unique to startups, programmers and YC. They just would be way happier if they simplified their life. Like everyone, they'll have to find out the hard way though and complicate their life to the extreme before they realize.