"I tell many people that Paul Graham is a genius. He saw the opportunity to start YC."

This is a very sly insult and betrays a major misunderstanding of how the market works. Did Facebook succeed because Mark Zuckerberg saw the "opportunity" to start a social networking site? Did Dropbox take off because they saw the "opportunity" for file synchronization? The idea is nonsense. These things succeeded not because their creators were the only ones to see the need (they weren't), but because an incredible amount of time and talent was put into making them successful.

When YC started, everyone said the idea was crazy. It still is. It's worked, like any startup, because of incredible execution -- not because it stumbled into a waiting opportunity.