101–110 of 171 posts
80k may be a little tight for international founders, as flights and legal fees for visas can be very expensive. Also silly things like paying extra for deposits on rent/bills as you have no US credit history. But otherwise seems reasonable.
$150K is not enough to secure H1B visas either.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Out of curiosity, what does the 'carcass' usually consist of? Wouldn't any leftover money go back to investors? Or does that get divided out to founders (seems like that would be a bad incentive). Or is it mostly related to the product (domains, code, etc..)?
you have to understand that YC & the start fund has little to no control over the companies, except perhaps moral authority. YC has common shares (and a small minority at that) while the start fund is arguably even worse off with a convertible note. so, if the founders decided to, they could just pay out the rest of the money as a bonus. immoral? yes. illegal? i don't think so.
1. You have idea, a plan to validate it and a plan to execute upon different outcomes and different startups require different financing. I am just wondering if YC has clear matrices which shows there is a same optimum financing for early stage startups in all the domains (healthcare, edu, consumer web, etc.) I am just curious about this!!! But then I read the following: " it sometimes caused messy disputes in the unsuccessful ones. Switching from $150k to $80k may not completely eliminate such problems, but it will make them at most half as bad."
2. The entire funding decision and amount is changed based on negative thought of a dispute among the founders. I believe this is fundamentally wrong and is against the entrepreneurial spirit. I wouldn't feel good as a person and an entrepreneur if my investor would come up with this. It basically means you don't know what you are doing and I am going to protect you against yourself!!!
3. Although a 70K difference is a small number, but it will have a huge impact on your startup: - validating your idea and pivoting: the startups will show a tenancy towards low hanging fruit instead of seeking for the bigger picture solution - Shorter runway impacts your flexibility and thus deal negotiations for the next rounds considering a 3-6 months funding period. - Am just wondering how this will impact valuations of companies in post YC. I would think the valuations would go down.
What are your thoughts on this?
That's the difference between "smart money" where investor(s) contribute more than cash into startups and "dumb money" where investor do not.
Great move YC!
Maybe $80k is enough for some ridiuclous $2 iPhone game or some startup for making a website for adding a single puny feature to an existing social network and having 15 minutes of fame.
But $80k is nowhere near enough money to create an Enterprise solutions startup. I laugh at your $80k and the hubdreds of flight-by-night, gimmicky, bullshit, small businesses that you will burn your money on.
It takes at least $5 million over 5 years to startup a serious business that has any chance in hell of becoming a real billion dollar company. That is the future.
$80k ... it's insulting to people with real ezperience, real ideas, real businesses and real explosive growth potential. You will never fund the next Apple, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, NVIDIA, etc ... You're just going to fund a whole lot of infantile business projects and a whole lot of fail.
Here are my thoughts about this: 1. You have idea, a plan to validate it and a plan to execute upon different outcomes and different startups require different financing. I am just wondering if YC has clear matrices which shows there is a same optimum financing for early stage startups in all the domains (healthcare, edu, consumer web, etc.) I am just curious about this!!! But then I read the following: " it sometime…
As for (2), potential investors say a lot of things that just make you feel terrible. The best response is to dig into them and try to figure out if there is any truth in the criticism, make any adjustments you can, and keep pushing ahead.
$80k is peanuts. Apparently these folks haven't learned the lesson that you get what you get what you pay for! Maybe $80k is enough for some ridiuclous $2 iPhone game or some startup for making a website for adding a single puny feature to an existing social network and having 15 minutes of fame. But $80k is nowhere near enough money to create an Enterprise solutions startup. I laugh at your $80k and the hubdreds of…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get why it's great for investors, but why is it great for founders? Especially when they could use the time to change plans.
The office hours help all the startups. Decreasing the amount invested helps the successful and borderline startups because it means less of our time is taken up mediating founder disputes in the ones that are exploding. And yes, that was a significant time suck; Jessica says the majority of her time last batch was spent dealing with founder breakups.
I guess there is no change, since the advantage YC sees in multi founders is probably only for the time interval before these disputes, at which point they are already doomed. But what I may be missing: could amicable breakup ever help a company avoid the dead pool?
Another thing I find missing from the discussion: is this move also meant to push new founders to profitability faster? PG seems to be mentioning it more lately ([2], [3] etc.).
[0] Honest question- I hope it does not spark another single vs. multi founder debate.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JK3sVFs6_rs
[2] The best solution is not to need money. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4067297
[3] The best thing to measure the growth rate of is revenue. http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html
$80k is peanuts. Apparently these folks haven't learned the lesson that you get what you get what you pay for! Maybe $80k is enough for some ridiuclous $2 iPhone game or some startup for making a website for adding a single puny feature to an existing social network and having 15 minutes of fame. But $80k is nowhere near enough money to create an Enterprise solutions startup. I laugh at your $80k and the hubdreds of…