Exactly. I was going to make this point myself, but you stated it better than I could. I can imagine a lot of prospective founders wanting to build an alternative platform to mitigate this issue, but then realize that further down the road they will ultimately become the very thing they set out to abolish in the first place.
> I don't know how to get around the business physics of this. Not sure anyone does.
Sometimes I think to myself that if their is less reliance on angel/VC funding from the very beginning, then founders could stay true to their vision. Like how Elon Musk refuses to make SpaceX a publicly traded company as it would squander the ultimate goal of colonizing mars. However, given how resource intensive it must be to process and store petabytes of video every year (exabytes in total), there is just no way around acquiring investment dollars.
Will there still be the $15k grant consideration if you become certified when you submit your app for the YC Core program?