[stevenameyer]

They need to keep the number of companies to a reasonable amount in order to give the companies that do get significant value out of the program. So until they manage to figure out a way to scale the YC program to be able to accommodate more companies (which I'm not necessarily sure is possible) some good companies that could have been very good fits with YC will be passed on.

They will inevitably miss some awesome companies as well as select some companies which wont amount to much. This is just part of doing something that is speculative. But they need to limit the number of companies in order to actually help the ones they do accept.

YC is a good program that certainly helps a lot of companies, but by no means is it the be all end all. There are many very successful startups that didn't go through YC and many not very successful startups that do go through YC. So if a company doesn't get into YC it's not the end of the world. There are plenty of paths to success that don't go through YC.