This is YC advice boiled down to its essential and most generalizable terms. Because it's general (applies to almost all their founders) it's also generic - the patterns matched across hundreds of humans. It leaves out the human toil, mistakes and doubt - but most importantly the emotions. It doesn't tell you why you should follow this advice. It doesn't show you what happened to the folks that did. It takes for granted its assumptions about what's valuable. Same for success.
It's the Cliff's notes for the YC ideology. So it could be the Cliff's notes part you find hollow, or it could be the YC ideology part you find hollow.