I think one of the most common problems incredibly smart hackers have is working on "businesses" with no real viable... business. They probably don't expect you to know everything there is to know about a given market, but it would be a little silly to make an <i>investment</i> in a group that can't think through money and evaluate how worthwhile something could be.
So wait.<p>You note that nowhere in your YC application do they specifically ask you about money stuff.<p>But, you talked to some YC Alums before the interview and they all asked you about $.<p>And since you didn't get selected you now assume that the YC partners really only care about the $? Sorry, I think that's a leap in thinking that might be in the wrong direction.<p>I applied with a website that let people name & share color... There wasn't billion dollar company sitting in front of them. There were a few guys with a passionate community and the ability to build great product. We were never asked in our interview about $ and didn't need to bullshit anything.<p>Yes, the Valley hype scene is heavily influenced by who's the next billion dollar company and puts little success on people making $5-10M/year in great businesses... But that isn't YC.<p>PG has on a number of occasions given me advice that is all about us as the founders being happy. Not about YC getting the biggest return possible.<p>So yeah, hopefully your idea could be a big business. But I would argue the opposite of what your post says. YC mostly cares that your idea is big and that you are a team that might be able to pull it off.<p>And IMHO... Try not to bullshit. It'll eventually catch up to you.
As someone who's both conducted interviews for an incubator, and been through the YC interviews, I think you're focusing on the wrong thing here. "The team" goes a lot beyond paper qualifications, and I think a lot of your shortcomings are there if anywhere:<p>* You changed your answers quickly before your interview because you hadn't thought them through before-hand.
* You weren't confident.
* You weren't committed. This is the big one for me. If this is a great idea, why is putting your PhD on hold conditional on getting into YC?<p>YC often accepts startups with ideas they don't like. We got a phone call right after walking out the door even though half the partners still weren't convinced of our idea. The important thing isn't having amazing figures at the start, it's being able to think things through. The YC partners can help with tuning to get the most impact. (It honestly doesn't seem like this is the biggest issue for them, either.)
As someone who's been there, it's super interesting how different everybody's interview experience is. I get the sense they tailor their strategy for each company, whether it's advance prep or just going with their gut. YC seems to have a nose to sniff out the most likely place a startup will raise a red flag. (One failure mode for them is if the interviewer guessed wrong.)