The YCVC investments are a fire-and-forget portfolio investment; VC's usually don't follow the companies directly unless they put in additional money.

I see - thanks! So it really is like an index, but of options. One or two will hit, and when they do, it's time to pay attention. I've heard stories of universities that seed firms with a Fire-and-Forget mindset, and then finding out after the fact that someone has a bunch of valuable contracts in a filing cabinet.

off-topic - I'm a fan of what your company is doing.

I doubt the "forget" part is as strong as your description implies. Instead they are "in" on a heavily pre-vetted set of companies with very little work. And then begin on Day 2 (probably Day 1, actually) figuring out how involved to get, likely getting meaningfully involved in favorites.

Thank you! =)

Curious as to why he left, since each of his $80,000 investment is a "guaranteed" 30x return, if we take his investment at a $800,000 valuation and the average valuation of a YC startup of $23.7M.

Aren't YCVC investments safes (nee notes) which have recently been averaging around $5m caps? 4-5x still pretty good.

Yeah, 50 startups * $80,000 * 5 = $22M per batch return with "no" work involved.

But this might be an annoyance considering him aiming for $300M return/year or so in his later-stage fund.

Yuri wasn't the sole investor in the YCVC notes. At least not each batch.