Sam Altman: ‘Too many’ Y Combinator companies raise money

Re:Sam Altman: ‘Too many’ Y Combinator companies raise money by jacquesm on Thursday December 21, 2017 @07:43PM (#15984333)

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.

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Re:Sam Altman: ‘Too many’ Y Combinator companies raise money by newaccount4434 on Friday December 22, 2017 @01:08AM (#15985588)

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.

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Re:Sam Altman: ‘Too many’ Y Combinator companies raise money by mrep on Friday December 22, 2017 @02:29AM (#15985837)

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.

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