That being said, as with the author, it is even more clear to me ycombinator itself is the best deal out there
It wouldn't make much sense to go to YC if for example you were building b2b enterprise apps or targeting non-english speaking market where YC lacks expertise, but other YC-style programs might be much more suitable.
On the contrary, I'm pretty sure YC are not only interested in such startups, they've funded some.
While that was possibly true of b2b+YC in the earlier days, they have since funded a number of those kinds of companies. Ours was among the early examples in 2007, and we certainly have no complaints about their contributions to our business. pg has said on several occasions that the reason they fund the kinds of companies they do (leaning heavily towards web 2.0 consumer businesses) is because that's who applies. Viaweb was b2b at its core, so one can't really say they don't know that kind of business.
Things like industry contacts can be critical (it can often be impossible to even get in to a company to pitch without an inside contact), lead times are very long, etc.
The challenges you face are often vastly different to most web 2.0 apps. Crossing the Chasm is a good book on the sort of challenge.
In those sort of circumstances you may well be better off finding a consortium of angels who are from your industry than joining a generic incubator style scheme (although obviously they have their own value).
So, yes, if you're building that kind of company, YC is probably not the right choice of investor. The scale of investment is also too low...enterprise sales guys with specific industry experience cost more per-month than YC invests. So unless they're also a founder and not drawing much of a salary, the math isn't going to work out.
Listen: You don't launch an enterprise product in 3 months. You launch a consumer product. MAYBE you launch a product for SMB, because that's what you are ( http://blog.asmartbear.com/blog/youre-a-little-company-now-a... ). In a few years, eventually you have enough market smarts and momentum to confidently sell stuff to big companies.
YC funds companies that can reach ramen profitability OR reach the point where they are worth investing in (angel or Series A). The B2B path is a longer (but maybe safer?) one. Eventually, you'll either get profitable, stall out and/or prove that it's worth spinning up a sales team (which may well require add'l funding).
Note: we are a 1.75 year-old YC company and we have lots of 5 and 6-figure deals in the sales pipeline. 12 months ago, I NEVER used the phrase "sales pipeline".
b2b YC companies include (off the top of my head): RescueTime, Frogmetrics, Xobni, Virtualmin, Snaptalent (deceased), etc.
For example:
* Adapters to connect Hospital ERP systems to Pharma companies
* Financial market liquidity masking servers that combine internal trade books with market trade books.
* Industry specific databases
* Warehouse logistics management
* Ultralow (microsecond) latency middleware
None of these are particularly sophisticated, and are all areas with active startups. But they're all in areas where the only companies who the software is useful to are large enterprises.
Great way to encourage reasoned discussion as opposed to groupthink.
(feel free to downvote this one though; as meta-discussions are off-topic unlike my previous comment)