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Investor Day

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Investor Day

#31

Post by lpolovets »

As an investor, I think this will accomplish a few things:

1) A lot of scheduling friction will disappear. The week just after demo day is usually crazy because hundreds of founders and investors are all trying to schedule meetings with each other, and there are inevitable race conditions that lead to a lot of rescheduling and wasted time. (E.g. I email three founders with 5 possible time slots, and they all reply and ask for the same time slot.)

2) I think this will be great for investors who act quickly and go by their gut. There are plenty of investors out there -- especially those who write smaller checks -- for whom 20 minutes will be enough time to make a quick decision.

3) I'm not sure if this will be great for investors like me that approach investing more methodically rather than with their gut.* I love 1-hour meetings because that's plenty of time for both sides to dig in and learn a lot about each other. Twenty minutes feels very short to me, and I'm not sure if a 20-minute meeting is more likely to save me and the founder from an unnecessary 1-hour meeting, or if I end up having just as many 1-hour meeting -- but now with an extra 20 minutes tacked on.

That said, I don't want to judge this process before I try it at least once, and I'm looking forward to trying it out in August.

* FWIW, there are great gut-based investors and great methodical investors, and I'm not implying either approach is better.

Re: Investor Day

#32

Post by beambot »

beambot wrote: 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…

Why the downvotes?

Seems like a well-reasoned hypothesis and contributes to the overall discussion. Has HN become that critical of different opinions that downvotes are used to punish dissent rather than using upvotes to indicate agreement?

Re: Investor Day

#33

Post by jknz »

The stable marriage problem has two natural algorithms that produce a stable matching: one algorithm give priority to women's choices and one gives priority to men's choices.

If the algorithm used by yc to produce the matching for each slot is based on these, which algorithm is used? The one that gives priority to women's choices or to men's choices? A variation that doesn't give priority to any gender choices?

Re: Investor Day

#34

Post by Finbarr »

RCortex wrote: 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.

The way the algorithm is written actually balances out the preferences of both groups. Investors and founders will each get to meet with their counterparts based on a ranking they supply.

Re: Investor Day

#35

Post by emagdnim2100 »

This is almost exactly how some law schools run their on-campus interviewing process (except the bit about actual decision-makers being required to attend). From what I've observed, it works really well. Pre-screening for at least some level of mutual interest can save everyone a lot of time.

Re: Investor Day

#36

Post by [deleted] »

RCortex wrote: 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.

[deleted]

Re: Investor Day

#37

Post by BinaryIdiot »

pc86 wrote: post #18
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #10

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.

20 minutes? I thought they got an order of magnitude less time. Regardless yeah it's probably a sign of an issue but with the current climate I don't think that necessarily has to be true.

Re: Investor Day

#38

Post by Finbarr »

DelaneyM wrote: post #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…

Investors are not weighted by their fund's size - they are ranked by the founders individually. Founders would be able to apply your stated preference for meeting with larger funds or with known high frequency investors, if they were so inclined.

Re: Investor Day

#39

Post by wrsh07 »

jknz wrote: post #33

The stable marriage problem has two natural algorithms that produce a stable matching: one algorithm give priority to women's choices and one gives priority to men's choices. If the algorithm used by yc to produce the matching for each slot is based on these, which algorithm is used? The one that gives priority to women's choices or to men's choices? A variation that doesn't give priority to any gender choices?

For clarity, the "women" : "men" are "investors" : "founders" in this context

Re: Investor Day

#40

Post by zillionize »

lpolovets wrote: post #31

As an investor, I think this will accomplish a few things: 1) A lot of scheduling friction will disappear. The week just after demo day is usually crazy because hundreds of founders and investors are all trying to schedule meetings with each other, and there are inevitable race conditions that lead to a lot of rescheduling and wasted time. (E.g. I email three founders with 5 possible time slots, and they all reply an…

I am an investor and my experience is, if you have done enough homework about the startup you want to meet, twenty minutes shall be long enough to clarify a few key things so you can make an informed decision.
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