Well, you can't harsh these findings too hard. Considering yc is a pretty successful unicorn hunter, having many exiting startups in their portfolio is par for the course. I suppose the board at yc would rather see a bunch of exits and a few IPOs than one Uber and a bunch of "great ideas".
I won a boilerplate (ycombinator copycat) competition last year and it's helped me a lot in some ways. It was also kinda stupid.
I mean, my teammates all quit as soon as they realized how much hard work a startup requires... Life lesson!
And, in actuality I haven't made much progress toward an actual company. but, I mean, this has been pretty great in some ways. Best part is my mentor was an expert in my field (automation, robots, etc.) and has really had a lot of fantastic input for me.
My key takeaway from the competition? Don't try to build a start up on your own. You really MUST have a strong team backing you up.
I'm probably going to crumple up this owl and start another one soon. Most importantly if you want to get good at drawing owls, you have to love drawing.