Ironically it might be a lot easier to raise money as long as there is less substance to the company. Dreams of getting in on the ground floor work so much better to woo investors with visions of Dropbox and Airbnb in their heads than a year old start-up without traction.

Besides that after that year the start-up will likely be out of runway and so in a much harder position to negotiate from.

If I were to run a YC backed company (which I won't be doing) I'd definitely use demo day to it's full potential.

Listen to the AirBnB story on the podcast "How I built this". Before YC, nobody wanted to invest in AirBnB and the company wasn't profitable. YC is how founders find ideas (in the case of Reddit) or refine them. (in the case of AirBnB) In the end, the short time offered in YC allows founders to create the minimum viable product and start to or continue to gain users. The fact that so many companies gain some form of investment shows that YC is a success! Some companies may eventually fail, but YC is a success.

Is it? I feel like they get so many applications and the bar is so high now that most of the teams are already getting steady revenues before even getting in.

This is one reason ICOs will hopefully disrupt VC strangehold. It's senseless for the fate of good companies to be determined by bogus social dynamics.

I get the regulation argument, but protecting stupid people from themselves is a losing battle. Everyone will know not to mortgage your house to invest in a new startup the same way everyone knows not to do heroin. Some people will anyway. But they already can participate in ICOs illegally, so it's a pretty decent analogy.

Looks like we have a disproportionate amount of VCs on HN. Luckily ICOs aren't going anywhere. Time to evolve or get left behind.

Seriously, I'm not a fan of ICOs, but the comment doesn't deserve down votes.

> I wonder if it would be effective to tell YC companies that they can participate in a demo day, but it doesn't have to be the one for their batch -- so a company could wait and join the following cohort in order to avoid the stigma of being "the company which couldn't get funding at demo day and is now going around to VCs one by one".

You can defer your demo day.

I mean.. that'll just change the first question VCs ask to "Why weren't you ready for demo day?" Maybe not as bad of a signal, but could still be construed as negative. (EDIT: Negative independent of how valid your reasoning your answer or spin you provide)