I see it more as more of a hedge. If you believe in the opportunity, placing extra bets makes sense. Uber and Lyft weren't the only ride share companies but sometimes luck wins out and sometimes execution does.
Additionally, if one seems to be winning, you just acqui-hire the "loser" in the winner, use that problem space expertise to scale faster AND you still get to claim a higher exit rate even if it was just to yourself.
Exactly right. Traditional VCs come up with a thesis and then buy 20% of the company they think will be the winner who fits that thesis when they're at like $1M to 10M revenue (series A)
YC can instead get ~10% of every plausible winner they come across when they're at $0 revenue
As noted elsethread, I think that almost certainly *is* what's going on; I was explaining why it's probably a good thing from (at least many of) the companies' perspectives too.
Additionally, if one seems to be winning, you just acqui-hire the "loser" in the winner, use that problem space expertise to scale faster AND you still get to claim a higher exit rate even if it was just to yourself.