81–90 of 175 posts
This guy is not really a good thing for YC, I honestly stopped caring that much about this incubator after that guy who was in before him left. Sam Altman should be removed.
How is your VC fund doing? :-)
This seems like a signalling problem. If a YC company looks for funding at some point after demo day, the first question VCs ask is going to be "why didn't you raise money at demo day?" -- so there's going to be an incentive for companies to go after money at demo day even if they're not ready simply because it will be much harder if they wait. I wonder if it would be effective to tell YC companies that they can part…
> I wonder if it would be effective to tell YC companies that they can participate in a demo day, but it doesn't have to be the one for their batch -- so a company could wait and join the following cohort in order to avoid the stigma of being "the company which couldn't get funding at demo day and is now going around to VCs one by one". You can defer your demo day.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Basically in joining YC, each YC member would be granted a percentage of YC's 7% stake in all of the YC companies which would reduce their need to fundraise. I was curious what this could mean in reality so I did some back of the envelope math. (As a disclaimer - I have no inside knowledge of the performance of YC's portfolio, so all this math could be wrong.) YC Summer '17 had 294 founders at 124 startups. Let's s…
Maybe I'm missing something. I don't see how that would reduce anyones need to fundraise. No one can wait around 10 years for others in their class to become liquid to fund their company.
This is, of course, largely how firms trading with their own money work, but not historically how VC firms operate.
Was just thinking the other day, it'd be super interesting if YC ran some YC Equity/YC UBI experiments within its own network. Basically in joining YC, each YC member would be granted a percentage of YC's 7% stake in all of the YC companies which would reduce their need to fundraise. In theory, YC members should all be highly motivated achievers and use that percentage stake to move their diverse set of businesses fo…
Not even remotely what UBI is.
If the artificially-created real estate "shortage" problem in the Bay Area was solved, lots of other problems would be solved. - Companies raising money just to pay inflated (yet still insufficient) labour costs - People who would love to work for startups but realize that most startup salaries barely gets you a studio apt, pretty cool until you have a family - Companies who "cant find" talent Is it any surprise comp…
> inflated (yet still insufficient) labour costs
This does not match reality since most startups in SV pay very very very little. In many cases barely enough to live with roommates (and forget having a family)
If the artificially-created real estate "shortage" problem in the Bay Area was solved, lots of other problems would be solved. - Companies raising money just to pay inflated (yet still insufficient) labour costs - People who would love to work for startups but realize that most startup salaries barely gets you a studio apt, pretty cool until you have a family - Companies who "cant find" talent Is it any surprise comp…
1. It's unclear how much additional housing will drop prices. There's enormous demand and denser housing costs more to build per square foot. Realistically, we're talking 10 to 20% drops as upper bounds of cuts (think Seattle costs)
2. [Edited to clarify price driving] These companies have decided to be in the bay area for some reason (mainly talent pool?) At that point, you are competing with very high paying companies. (Top prices for senior eng being set by companies like Google which pay $300k TCO; Series B stage startups need to do $170k+ cash to be competitive.. while not everyone can command these jobs, land costs are being set by them)
3. Sure, there might be some people excited enough to take a pay cut. But I suspect a lot of the problem is how poor the expected outcome is for first employees. Companies still seem unwilling to give out equity levels that justify pay cuts (i.e >10%)
Was just thinking the other day, it'd be super interesting if YC ran some YC Equity/YC UBI experiments within its own network. Basically in joining YC, each YC member would be granted a percentage of YC's 7% stake in all of the YC companies which would reduce their need to fundraise. In theory, YC members should all be highly motivated achievers and use that percentage stake to move their diverse set of businesses fo…
I am interested in trying some version of this! Have been thinking about all the edge cases.
If the artificially-created real estate "shortage" problem in the Bay Area was solved, lots of other problems would be solved. - Companies raising money just to pay inflated (yet still insufficient) labour costs - People who would love to work for startups but realize that most startup salaries barely gets you a studio apt, pretty cool until you have a family - Companies who "cant find" talent Is it any surprise comp…
I'm not sure how much bay area real estate shortages drive this; I suspect little. 1. It's unclear how much additional housing will drop prices. There's enormous demand and denser housing costs more to build per square foot. Realistically, we're talking 10 to 20% drops as upper bounds of cuts (think Seattle costs) 2. [Edited to clarify price driving] These companies have decided to be in the bay area for some reason…