Participating in YC was hugely valuable for our team, we had great mentorship, access to an amazing network of founders who have provided advice as we launched Moonshot, and of course investors. I don't know what their criteria is for accepting us, but I think the fact we were multiple time founders that had built operational and technology company and that there is a big opportunity to apply technology to every step of acquire, operate and grow in our model. We also love the idea of building something like Startup School for ecommerce entrepreneurs. One day we hope that ecommerce entrepreneurs want to be a part of Moonshot the same way we wanted to be part of YC. Finally as we build tools for ourselves we could potentially make those available to the millions of ecom sellers out there.

Did you raise $160m prior to joining YC? If so, that 7% must have been worth quite a bit.

This shouldn't be surprising; YC is no longer a tight group of like-minded nerds sitting around a table, despite what image they still try to market. It is a giant machine that is growing in both scale and breadth. Where the signaling value used to be very valuable to a particular segment of the population, it's now the same as getting an investment from a prominent traditional VC. Still has value but in a much more general sense.