Humor helps, I figure. My serious answer is that we continue as planned. From the moment we realized we'd have to set 'badness' to 'yes', we made sure we were doing things as we would if we weren't going to be a part of YC.

For us in particular, that does mean looking for opportunities to interest venture capital funds. As our time-to-market(s) decreases, our profit-potential increases correspondingly.

One of the main things we're going to do is get early reactions from potential customers. Letting them know what we're trying to build, and what it would offer them, should be a great way to get good guidance, and possibly even some proof of value we can take to investors.

Other than that, we're building, iterating, and talking. #startups on irc.freenode.net is a great place to find smart people with similar interests, in YC and out. Hope to see you there!

Your comment reminds me of the underpant gnomes from South Park.

My co-founder and I are moving forward regardless, since our only real expense is server fees and advertising costs. We've also joined both LinkedIn and Doostang and I've begun trying to tap all of my friends who are either smart, connected, or entrepreneurial to get together over lunch and discuss things. As a younger founder, it's great to still have the parents to fall back on for expenses. :$