
YC Series A Program - jameshk
http://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-series-a-program/
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jacquesm
A good chunk of this information would be useful to non-YC companies as well,
I really hope they will open up the bits that do not require physical presence
in SV.

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akharris
That's definitely part of our plan. We'd like to expose both data and some of
the tools we're building.

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jacquesm
That's very nice, for all companies that are not part of the SV ecosystem this
will be a major asset.

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ttul
I can’t upvote this enough.

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vjeux
All the founding rounds are discrete events. I wonder if there's an
opportunity to have a way to do funding in a more continuous way. You can get
more people chipping in funding at random points in the life of the company
that unlocks over time.

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lacker
You can do that, it's just stressful. Big company analogy: it's like what if
instead of getting headcount allocated just once a year, you had to re-argue
about how much headcount your team deserved constantly. ;-)

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madeofpalk
Regular person analogy: what if you had to negotiate your salary for the week
every Monday.

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spiznnx
What if you were notified what your salary would be every month through an app
(uber)?

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CyrusL
For people who don't read the article and jump straight to the comments: YC is
not leading Series A rounds.

YC is creating a program to help improve outcomes for portfolio companies that
go on to raise a Series A from other VCs.

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noahmbarr
I’d be curious as to the details of this program.

The post is mostly focused on the “why”.

Duration, inaugural class start date, size of program, YC resources committed
to program, cost in terms of cap table, criteria for eligibility, etc

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akharris
\- Duration depends on the requirements of the company \- No real classes,
this is rolling \- No cost to the cap table \- Have to be a Y company

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jforman
I had assumed they did this already. As much as we hate to admit it, pitching
(or "running a process" — see comments below) is critical to the success of a
company and therefore a required skill for founders. And YC seems to be an
ideal place to build a collective set of best practices.

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akharris
The program isn't actually just - or even mainly - about the act of pitching.
There's an entire process around running a successful fundraise that changes
from round to round and company to company.

Pitching is part of that process, and what we've learned is that the A pitch
is a different thing altogether from seed pitches. We have a lot of work to do
to get great at that, and I'm grateful for the help we're getting from alums
who have gone through it before and have been giving us advice.

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jforman
Indeed, "running a process" is the important skill, which includes the deck,
storytelling, etc. I was using "pitching" loosely.

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hamhamed
What would be the requirements to get into this program? I.e team size,
previous amount raised, etc?

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bobwaycott
> _These often-discussed milestones have_ lead _a lot of founders to believe
> they’re ready to raise when they’re not._

The word here is _led_ , not its metallic homonym.

I do not understand why this mistake appears to be _increasing_ in occurrence
over the last few years.

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eric_h
> I do not understand why this mistake appears to be increasing in occurrence
> over the last few years.

Autocorrect, perhaps?

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bobwaycott
Perhaps? I’ve never seen autocorrect suggest _lead_ when I’m typing _led_ ,
but maybe it happens to others for sure. On the other hand, I see it not only
far more frequently in online usage, but far more consistently, as if people
think _lead_ is a homonym of the same-spelling sort, not the same-sounding
sort.

