You're confusing YC with a charity. It is not. Trying to invest in teams that will succeed is the modus operandi of virtually all venture investors, YC included.
YC is trying to rewrite a lot of the rules of venture investing, and has had quite some success there, but at its very core it's important to remember that they are investors. At the end of the day, the measuring stick of an investor is their returns, not how many (proto-) companies they pulled from the brink of implosion. As such, your second measuring stick rings false.
I suspect that AirBnb, Dropbox and Heroku are simultaneously among the investments that YC is the most proud of and the companies that would have been most likely to succeed had they not been a part of YC.
YC is trying to rewrite a lot of the rules of venture investing, and has had quite some success there, but at its very core it's important to remember that they are investors. At the end of the day, the measuring stick of an investor is their returns, not how many (proto-) companies they pulled from the brink of implosion. As such, your second measuring stick rings false.
I suspect that AirBnb, Dropbox and Heroku are simultaneously among the investments that YC is the most proud of and the companies that would have been most likely to succeed had they not been a part of YC.