"Don’t let funding take your eye off the goal: making something people want. Everything else, including going through Y Combinator, is there to support that goal but is not the goal itself." Exactly...
This is particularly challenging, since, given the amount of effort it takes to make an application, if you apply to multiple accelerators during "application season" it's easy for it to be a full time job.
It's very easy to believe "if only we just got in... we'd have the money to do X".
