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Investor Day

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Investor Day

#41

Post by morgante »

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…

Not every YC company will successfully raise money, but I suspect all of them will at least have a few people interested enough to take a 20 minute meeting.

Re: Investor Day

#42

Post by timdorr »

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 think you'll still be able to be methodical afterwards via direct communication over emails/calls to the startups, just as you used to before. Unless this Tinder-style app removes all the contact info you'd normally receive, you should be able to take it slow if you want.

Re: Investor Day

#43

Post by DelaneyM »

Finbarr wrote: post #38
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.

Without knowing how one ranks, though, it's substantially harder to prioritize.

This doesn't hurt the big funds so much as it does the small ones. If I were an eCommerce or Logistics company, for example, there are a subset of niche funds which would be great strategic investors; but knowing they're only going to invest in one or two ventures would leave me disinclined to prioritize them when high-frequency investors are in the mix.

I don't want to kvetch here, it's a much better system than the current free-for-all. But since investors already get the first-mover advantage, it would be nice if entrepreneurs had more complete information.

To carry the theme of relationship analogues in this thread: knowing who's interested in me is great, but I'd rather be someone's dream girl than a fallback or fling.

Re: Investor Day

#44

Post by iandanforth »

zillionize wrote: post #40
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.

Out of curiosity what constitutes that homework for you and do you feel like you can complete that homework prior to demo day?

Re: Investor Day

#45

Post by shimon »

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?

I don't think those algorithms are applicable here, because it's normal (even good) for investors to invest in multiple companies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_marriage_problem

The logical optimization target for YC is the total valuation of their companies, which probably means whatever approach creates the most competition among investors.

Edit: more active discussion on this topic at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12051218

Re: Investor Day

#46

Post by lpolovets »

timdorr wrote: post #42
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 think you'll still be able to be methodical afterwards via direct communication over emails/calls to the startups, just as you used to before. Unless this Tinder-style app removes all the contact info you'd normally receive, you should be able to take it slow if you want.

I agree that I can still be methodical after Investor Day. I'm just saying that before, if I was interested in 25 companies after demo day, then I'd do 25 1-hour meetings spread over a few days. With Investor Day -- and without a chance to do much prep/research before each short meeting -- I'm not sure if I'm going to have 25 20-minute meetings and then still have 25 1-hour meetings to follow up, or if it's more like 25 20-minute meetings and then 5-10 1-hour meetings.

Re: Investor Day

#47

Post by lpolovets »

zillionize wrote: post #40
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.

I personally like asking a lot of questions, so I'd still prefer >20 minutes. I 100% agree with you though that preparation can save a lot of meeting time. One catch with YC companies in my experience is that they rarely have detailed pitch decks or significant web presences, so there's often not that much to research before a meeting.

Re: Investor Day

#48

Post by zillionize »

iandanforth wrote: post #44
zillionize wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Out of curiosity what constitutes that homework for you and do you feel like you can complete that homework prior to demo day?

>>what constitutes that homework for you

This is the homework we do:

https://www.zillionize.com/data/

>>do you feel like you can complete that homework prior to demo day

Yes the time is very tight so we have built an app to automate that.

Re: Investor Day

#49

Post by cperciva »

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?

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.

This is true under two conditions: 1. Marriages are heterosexual; and 2. Marriages are monogamous.

While startup/VC relationships are heterosexual (err, heterofinancial?), they are absolutely not monogamous, so the analogy to the stable matching algorithm already fails.

Re: Investor Day

#50

Post by chollida1 »

I don't know, your answer very wrong to me. What do you even know about math.

Did you even win the Putnam, if not then please don't be bolder than the parent poster.

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