The New Deal

Post by diziet » Wed, Apr 23, 2014, 6:22 AM UTC

cperciva wrote: post #4

I can't help thinking that this seems a little bit unfair. While there's a nominal out for "exceptional cases", it seems to me that a company like Stripe deserves a much higher valuation than a company like Tarsnap... not to mention the difference between companies which are joining YC after they're already established and companies which are merely a twinkle in their founders' eyes. What exactly is the problem being…

Post by ericd » Wed, Apr 23, 2014, 7:09 AM UTC

karamazov wrote: post #41

Beliavsky wrote: post #11

I have wondered if affluent parents can replicate at least the money part of Y Combinator. $120K is about the list price of two years of Harvard/MIT/Stanford . With a son who loves to program, I have wondered if sending him to a cheaper school and giving him the difference in installments after he graduates is better than paying for a "name" school. It depends on the quality of the cheaper school, of course. And I th…

Off topic, but if your son has the chance to go Harvard/MIT/Stanford, he absolutely should. The difference is primarily in the caliber of the other students, and it makes a world of difference to have such a concentration of talent in one place. (Note that I'm not saying there isn't talent elsewhere, just that there's an incredible concentration of it in the top n schools.)

Post by ig1 » Wed, Apr 23, 2014, 9:31 AM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #5

I'm more excited about the effect this will have in general than the effect it will have on YC companies. The difference for a YC company is that they don't have to give up an extra percentage as they raise their seed round to cover the convertible note/SAFE that they got from YCVC. With no discount, if a YC company raised at a $10M valuation that 80,000 would be worth .8% of the company - not enough to really move t…

Post by argonaut » Wed, Apr 23, 2014, 10:31 AM UTC

_delirium wrote: post #159

argonaut wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the tech world, the YC signal > H/M/S signal.

I don't think that's generally true. YC is very well respected in a very specific niche of tech, while H/M/S have much broader name recognition in tech generally. Depends to some extent on what you want to do. YC has great name recognition among VCs, so if you're going that route, it's a good name to have. A Stanford or MIT degree generally has better name recognition among people hiring for tech jobs, especially out…

Post by ZenPro » Wed, Apr 23, 2014, 12:32 PM UTC

Iftheshoefits wrote: post #86

logicallee wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But $120k is just not a lot of money. The real value of YC is the signal that getting accepted sends to other seed investors. This idea (first quoted sentence) needs to die. It is toxic to the early-stage ecosystem. Any amount of money is a ton of money. Period. You can ignore the hustling that Jobs or Zuckerberg did for literally a couple of thousand dollars - read Zuckerberg's contracts at the time he was at Harv…

That $120k has to buy incorporation and legal fees, business operating expenses, and living expenses for at least 2 founders for three months. It's significantly better than $17k plus a note, but it's still a small enough amount that the program effectively selects for founding teams who either don't need the money (e.g. already have substantial financial means from other sources) or haven't got anything to lose (e.g…