Re:Scaling YC
by Zababa on Tuesday March 23, 2021 @11:57AM
(#26556529)
I've heard a few times that recent YC companies often find a lot of customers in previous YC companies. I have no idea how true it is, but if it's a substantial effect, increasing batch size could increase this as well.
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It’s like the banner ad economy of the late 90’s. Every startup making money by selling banner ads to other startups. What could go wrong?
Re:Scaling YC
by notyourday on Tuesday March 23, 2021 @01:39PM
(#26557796)
It is just revenue kiting. Company A enters $20M deal with company B which enter a $19.975M deal with company C which enters a $19.970M deal with company A.
Ma, look at our revenue! Lets do another raise! Investors will eat it up!
It depends quite a bit on what type of product or service you are selling. For us, we expected to find customers in our batch, but when we did not we learned a valuable lesson: that it was larger companies that valued our offering more.
Re:Scaling YC
by frakkingcylons on Tuesday March 23, 2021 @12:19PM
(#26556796)
Indeed and that was mentioned explicitly in the article as a benefit of having larger batches.
Re:Scaling YC
by Judgmentality on Tuesday March 23, 2021 @01:04PM
(#26557310)
That sounds like a ponzi scheme.
It sounds like every B2B company. It's only a Ponzi scheme if YC companies are all B2B and primarily sell to each other.
They're well on their to that. 46% of companies in the last batch were B2B [0].