YC W20 Online Demo Day moved up due to investor interest

Post by phsource » Wed, Mar 11, 2020, 6:31 AM UTC

nugget wrote: post #10

phsource wrote: post #7

I'm glad they're moving Demo Day up. The whole point of YC is to level the playing field for all kinds of founders, and this would help keep the focus on Demo Day rather than the behind-the-scene investor meetings that tend to benefit connected, established founders. Personally, as a YC W19, first-time founder of Wanderlog [1], I didn't do any fundraising before Demo Day. But I heard from friends in the batch about c…

>and who's a former co-founder of a co. with a billion-dollar exit I know your point wasn't entirely literal but it made me curious as to how many YC founders are in this position...Kyle with Twitch and then Cruise is the only one that comes to mind.

Post by dang » Wed, Mar 11, 2020, 6:44 AM UTC

maram wrote: post #5

mobileexpert wrote: post #3

I don’t really understand this, doesn’t YC strongly encourage investors, to the point of punishing those who violate, to wait until Demo Day? That way they get to build good market conditions for raising.

>> doesn’t YC strongly encourage investors, to the point of punishing those who violate, to wait until Demo Day? That way they get to build good market conditions for raising. I’m not sure what’s your source because the first paragraph contradicts what you are saying “Over the last few days, a large number of investors have accelerated their outreach to our current batch of founders. They are moving quickly to make i…

Post by AVTizzle » Wed, Mar 11, 2020, 7:25 AM UTC

technotony wrote: post #2

This is smart. If coronavirus is growing by a factor of 10 per week then we are all going to be in lockdown/isolation in two weeks time and probably not focusing on doing seed deals.

Post by maram » Wed, Mar 11, 2020, 7:35 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #13

maram wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> doesn’t YC strongly encourage investors, to the point of punishing those who violate, to wait until Demo Day? That way they get to build good market conditions for raising. I’m not sure what’s your source because the first paragraph contradicts what you are saying “Over the last few days, a large number of investors have accelerated their outreach to our current batch of founders. They are moving quickly to make i…

It's discouraged but people do it anyway. It's in YC's interest to help all the startups in the batch; presumably they decided this was the best way. (I have no inside info; in fact I just found out about this from the HN submission.)

Post by onion2k » Wed, Mar 11, 2020, 7:47 AM UTC

phsource wrote: post #18

onion2k wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite posting on HN a lot I don't know much about how YC works. You seem to be implying that reaching investors before demo day is "cheating" somehow, and that it's not in the spirit of YC to do it. What benefit is there to your startup in trying to keep things balanced? Obviously you don't want to sabotage other startups in your cohort, but I can't figure out why talking to investors as early as you can would be s…

The advice we get from Y Combinator (which I think is extremely valid) is to focus on our product and customers, because that's ultimately what investors are going to look at. Fundraising is distracting, emotionally draining, and unproductive if you don't have those. If you're spending half your time during the program fundraising, that's half the time not spent on more important tasks