
Y Combinator’s Biggest Demo Day Yet Draws Throng Of Investors - ssclafani
http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/24/y-combinator-demo-day-2/
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mrshoe
I don't remember ever seeing this many companies in a single YC batch that
were successful and/or well known before they even applied to YC.

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jacoblyles
I would guess that it has something to do with the increasing value of the
YCombinator brand name. In 2006, a company that is already earning good
revenues isn't going to give PG a chunk of equity in exchange for $15,000,
some free meals, and advice. In 2010 a YC investment still offers $15,000,
free meals, and advice, but it also guarantees that you will catch the eye of
top flight VCs, be part of an alumni network laden with talent, and get great
publicity. That's appealing even to companies that have an established
product.

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jacoblyles
YCombinator is getting so big that I am using YC company products without
realizing it.

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wwortiz
Aside: This is why capital letters for every word in a title shouldn't be
done, simple statements become hard to parse.

I'm also curious if demo days are continually growing or they vary from
session to session. But other than that I haven't seen a lot of these ideas on
hacker news (maybe I'm just not on enough) but this is a cool aggregation of
links for that.

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davidw
Out of curiosity, if any of you guys feels like discussing it, how do things
work out in terms of a "liquidity event" between YC and someone going the "37
signals" route, and simply turning into a profitable, small company that's not
going to sell out or IPO?

~~~
jackowayed
PG was asked that ... somewhere (Mixergy?). He said that it was pretty much
setup such that YC wouldn't get any money without a liquidity event (because
that's what they expect companies to go after), but he did say that
theoretically they might be able to work something out whereby a profitable
company that doesn't want to exit pays dividends to all stock holders, which
of course includes YC.

Edit: it was indeed Mixergy:

 _Andrew: If a Y Combinator company becomes a lifestyle company, can you guys
still profit from the business?

PG: No. I mean there’s got to be an exit for it, equity holders to get any
money. I mean, maybe — maybe in the future there is some model where companies
pay dividends instead of an exit that like we’ve never tried to get anybody to
do that, and we don’t have any real hopes about it. So, no._

I pulled it from
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Qp7sHPm...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Qp7sHPmQyLMJ:mixergy.com/y-combinator-
paul-
graham/+site:mixergy.com+paul+graham+mixergy+transcript&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)
because <http://mixergy.com/y-combinator-paul-graham/> is just giving me a
white box and a gray background.

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Tichy
This makes me wonder: how likely is it that a startup does not apply for
YCombinator? In other words, assuming YC is good at picking the best, how
likely is it that the YCombinator startups are actually the best current
startups overall?

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dotBen
Is it true that there are companies that demoed today but haven't launched -
and that attendees had to sign an NDA to keep them 'off the record'?

(source: the tc.com post on this thread + twitter noise)

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Harj
no. we do not make anyone sign an NDA.

what happens is if a startup has not yet publicly launched and still wants to
be able to give someone an exclusive/control how they launch then they mark
themselves as off the record. what this prevents is someone briefly mentioning
them in an article and then another publication refusing to write about them
because it's already been 'covered'. if the startup doesn't care about this,
then they keep themselves on record.

~~~
seiji
_refusing to write about them because it's already been 'covered'_

Does that happen? It seems impossibly childish.

~~~
staunch
It was a TechCrunch policy at one point. Maybe still.

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markstansbury
Cool to see this all in one place. I've been Twitter spammed all day with the
news. Looks like it was a great event. The American economy should be proud!

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drtse4
I was just thinking about this the other day looking at the jobs page,
wouldn't be a good idea to put somewhere a list of the companies that started
from YC? Especially for companies that sell services to end-users (if i know
that company x is related to yc, i'd probably be more inclined to buy what
they offer... see jacoblyles's post).

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jacquesm
I believe this is such a list:

[https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AkkhSN3vaY4jdF90b1l...](https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AkkhSN3vaY4jdF90b1l1Vnl5NmZjaTBNQWlJYVozMEE&hl=en#gid=20)

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100k
Wow, this is a really impressive batch of startups. I thought our group (S09)
was pretty good but I am awed by this batch.

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Raphael
Does Y Combinator list its launched startups exclusively on TechCrunch?

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waderoush
YC startups tend to launch in TechCrunch, but TC by no means has a lock on YC
coverage. I invite you to check out Xconomy's debrief on Demo Day and compare
it to TechCrunch's version. ;-)

[http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2010/08/25/the-
definiti...](http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2010/08/25/the-definitive-y-
combinator-demo-day-debrief/?single_page=true)

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johnrob
30% per week is an insane growth rate (thefridge.com)!

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staunch
You're falling for the percentage trick that works really well when your
numbers are tiny.

"I've grown revenue 300% month-over-month for the past six months" -- "How
much in absolute dollars?" -- "Oh, well almost $400 this month I think"

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iamelgringo
How many investors in a throng?

Just wondering how many showed up.

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clistctrl
A while ago there was a post on here for a new Y Combinator company that was
going to provide an alternative for online payments. When is their demo day?
really looking forward to it :)

Edit: here it is, <http://ycombinator.posterous.com/need-to-process-payments>

