Sorry about that - what I meant is that an investor role is to identify likely winners and support them until they get acquired or IPO. But ycombinator have more than the ability of identifying winners, I think they have achieved the status of turning people into winner just by picking them. Their true value is not by giving out money or knowing who are the winners, but by adding value to teams to a point where everything they touch turn into gold.
People will want to get associated with anything ycombinator invests in, you can see that with the fact that the startfund is now offering $150k convertible note to any company getting accepted into YC. That is amazing.
_disclaimer:_ I tried getting into YC once but got rejected - but I still think of myself as a winner!
He means that in the past, they made good guesses about which companies would be winners. Now, they have so much clout that merely by picking a company they can make it a winner.
Of course, they're still making smart picks. It's just easier for those picks to succeed.
