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Investor Day

blog.ycombinator.com

21–30 of 92 posts

Re: Investor Day

#21
Are investors weighted by their fund's size? Or are founders told the ranking they were given by each interested investor?

I can imagine many firms go into demo day with the resources and willingness to fund 10-20 ventures, whereas others are looking for only one or two.

I would much rather be the fifth choice of the former than third choice of the latter. If I knew my position in the stack I could figure it out for myself, or it could be calculated for me if YC is trying to avoid the negative consequences of making that transparent.

Re: Investor Day

#23
From the way they've set this up, it appears to be optimal for investors and pessimal for founders. Anyone else notice the same or disagree? It's in the proof for a particular theorem.

Re: Investor Day

#24
post #16
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not quite the stable marriage problem, because in the stable marriage problem you're trying to find an optimal 1:1 pairing. It's also not the NRMP problem because in that case, residents are only matched with one hospital in a year. Here companies are matched with multiple investors, and investors are matched with multiple companies. But regardless, I believe the algorithm is roughly the same as the NRMP algorit…

In the NRMP there is a N:1 matching between residents and hospitals, where N If the meetings are time sliced, let's say by hour, then run the algorithm for each time slice.

Well, with the constraint that no startup wants to have multiple visits with the same investor (and vice versa) - so you need to rerun the algorithm with the earlier matches removed from a preference list.

Re: Investor Day

#25
post #23

From the way they've set this up, it appears to be optimal for investors and pessimal for founders. Anyone else notice the same or disagree? It's in the proof for a particular theorem.

What makes you say that? This seems to me like a great idea that gives startup founders a quick pitch and an instant response from potential investors. It's almost like a match.com or Tinder for startups/investors.

Re: Investor Day

#26
> ...if Investing/General Partner is not present, the slot will be cancelled.

These seems to be an attempt to reinforce FOMO to force key people to attend demo day. Resorting to these tactics implies a pretty big perceived power imbalance... Eg. is this a reaction to senior partners sending their underlings because of DDay burnout? If so, this could backfire. The senior partners might just not show up (still), and force founders to attend offsite meetings later anyway (in addition to the new DDay meetings). In other words: This might just be a net increase in founder effort without changing the investor-founder DDay dynamic. After all: What do the senior partners gain / lose by this new situation? Not much (aside from FOMO), I'd guess. But the best investors will always be in demand anyway -- whether they attend DDay or not.

Re: Investor Day

#27
post #26

> ...if Investing/General Partner is not present, the slot will be cancelled. These seems to be an attempt to reinforce FOMO to force key people to attend demo day. Resorting to these tactics implies a pretty big perceived power imbalance... Eg. is this a reaction to senior partners sending their underlings because of DDay burnout? If so, this could backfire. The senior partners might just not show up (still), and fo…

Actually, for a long time now we've only allowed partners to come to demo day.

We are relaxing this restriction and allowing partners to bring associates to Investor Day, but only if they come themselves.

Re: Investor Day

#28
post #23

From the way they've set this up, it appears to be optimal for investors and pessimal for founders. Anyone else notice the same or disagree? It's in the proof for a particular theorem.

I disagree and believe this should be better for founders. Demo Day works so well because it's a forcing function for getting a lot of investors to see you at once and make a decision quickly, because so many other investors are deciding at the same time. Typically, investors want a long time to consider a company, and they only move fast if someone is / might bid against them. Scheduling meetings post-Demo Day is tough, and most people do it sub-optimally (by scheduling them too far apart). This new system makes meetings happen faster and more per day, increasing a chance of getting a bite quickly, which should lead to a higher chance of closing the round.

The downside I see is that if you are bad at meeting investors / need to iterate on your pitch, these meetings won't allow you to do that, as they'll be over before you can rethink it. But I think it's generally worth more / faster meetings.

*As another investor pointed out, 20 minute meetings may also be too short. I am not sure what the optimal meeting length should be. 30 minutes might be better. 1 hour is probably too long (you can always schedule a follow up meeting).

Re: Investor Day

#29
post #18

Seems like a solid idea. I honestly thought something like this was already in place so it makes sense. Still though the first thing I thought of is what it might feel like to be part of the statistic few who get zero investors clicking the button (I mean statistically this should happen at least a couple of times due to the batch size, right? Or am I severely underestimating the amount of investors that attempts do…

If you can't get a single investor to give you 20 minutes after Demo Day you've got much bigger problems.

A few years ago sure, but 2016 has been pretty brutal for seed and series A. I imagine a small percentage of great companies will lose out as a result of a cold funding climate.

Re: Investor Day

#30
This is extremely valuable data for YC to capture for themselves. I wonder how they might use it other than for a match-making algorithm..
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