31–40 of 43 posts
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.
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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
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Think on the margin. If there’s a particularly good batch of startups probably the amount invested will be greater than average but I doubt it will be exactly proportional to quality. In the long run the ecosystem would adjust to higher quality by attracting more funding. But a company only goes through Demo Day once and they’re all competing for the capital of VCs and angels, which capital is probably medium term fl…
But again what business is it of yours if someone else is faster out of the gate than you? This is like complaining that another company is better at marketing than you. I guess that's bad for you, but not their problem.
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…
> all kinds of shenanigans I don’t understand - why do you care if another company fundraises or not? What’s it go to do with you? YC isn’t some kind of competition is it?
Also - the first thing many investors asked us at demo day was "who else is investing?" - hard to answer this when you've specifically been instructed not to fundraise yet.
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
Is there any way to participate as investor? I did not immediately find a way to sign up for it but would be very interested.
>>They can sort companies by industry and geography, and will be able to export the list of companies to a spreadsheet. 4 days ago I commented here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22506013 “I think YC should add a sheet for us to write our comments/ratings and decision” I shared my experience on how I get bored and excited. Many people reached out since then asking me to share my spreadsheet. This sheet will be…
Should continue to do online demo day in conjunction with live ones. Would be a great way to scale the platform
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> all kinds of shenanigans I don’t understand - why do you care if another company fundraises or not? What’s it go to do with you? YC isn’t some kind of competition is it?
1) YC may not be, but fundraising is a competition ( https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/09/sequoia-is-giving-away-21-... ) 2) Herd Mentality: There is subtle signaling if a company being presented right beside you already has 50% of their round closed, vs a company that hasnt received this early interest. These are not my ideals (I'm a fan of self-funding and sustainable growth), just the reality.
Also, it's not a subtle effect at all, particularly now that demo day is split up into batches with similar companies grouped together. If you're presenting on the same day as some company close to your space that has raised millions, it looks bad. Investors routinely ask who else has invested in your company. If company X has a long list of name investors and you don't, investors want to put their money in company X. It's a downside of the dynamics of the feeding frenzy created by demo day -- investors have little to go on, so they make a big deal out of herd signaling.
Obviously, this doesn't matter for the hottest deals, but most companies in a batch aren't hot deals, and the hot deals don't need demo day in the first place.