
What Changed at Y Combinator After 7 Years - ivankirigin
http://blog.yesgraph.com/changed-y-combinator-7-years/
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tptacek
Would you have done it again if you had no plans to raise funds?

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ivankirigin
If you've never raised anything, then it doesn't shift your company to be on a
startup growth-is-life go-big-or-go-home track. Any fundraising does that.

If you're asking whether removing the value of demo day changes things, yes I
think it does. It diminishes the value. By how much is tough to say.

I think you should do it, if that is what you're wondering. I think your
audience fits really well with their network and experience. From what I
understand about what you're doing.

So if you want to have a bigger impact and make it more likely to win, then do
it. Related from yesterday: [http://blog.yesgraph.com/is-yc-worth-
it/](http://blog.yesgraph.com/is-yc-worth-it/) (read to the end)

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tptacek
Not asking about Starfighter, but have friends who have and/or might in the
future consider applying, and while I have a very crisp answer for the ones
that expect to raise, have less of one for the ones who don't.

For our part, we have our hands full just shipping. :)

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ivankirigin
What is a typical reason people don't want to raise money?

My general advice is to apply if you want your startup to succeed.

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tptacek
Control over destiny (ie not wanting a board to report to), already have easy
path to revenue, growth options other than "all in on best hockey stick bet we
can find within 6 months", work/life balance, long term outlook (being for
instance in a business you want to spend 20 years in, rather than 4), obvs.
huge distraction of fundraising, elimination of a whole class of success
outcomes for the company, not having a backstory that will secure good terms
and/or good investors.

Different of these things for different companies, of course.

Re: your second sentence: -.-

I like YC! But come on.

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ivankirigin
My case specific advice can differ. My general advice without knowing the
context is to apply. I didn't mean it is for everyone.

Some of those reasons to not raise after YC would exclude taking money from YC
at all. They are still investors that expect a return.

Let me give an example that sounds crazy to normal people. If you're only
going to make $1M a year and won't ever sell your company, you shouldn't
bother taking external funding from investors that expect a strong return.

~~~
tptacek
I agree! I'll go you one further: I don't have a lot of sympathy for people
who complain about how investors make it hard to run a slow-burn company, or
to build a service that funds itself on subscription fees rather than
ads/data.

I gave a long list of reasons though because I think there are reasons not to
raise even if you're ambitious about growth.

It's very clear to me that if you think you might ever raise, YC is a no-
brainer.

It's pretty clear to me that if you've never run a company before, even if you
don't ever plan on raising, YC is a net positive.

After that, it's less clear to me --- not that I think it's a bad idea, just
that I think it's something you'd have to think about, rather than
automatically saying "of course yes yes!".

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codingdave
The real question on my mind is why you would do YC twice?

If you already have the connections to get advice/mentoring, and the actual
investment is pretty minimal... what exactly is the driver to do this twice?

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rgbrgb
At the very least, as Ivan says, Demo Day is an amazing forcing function for
getting your shit presentable and pushing it out to investors. You know how
everyone says the best way to pitch an investor is by getting a warm intro
from someone who already invested? YC gives you 500+ of those intros on the
same day.

That's not to say that YC is only good for fundraising, but that specific
piece has about the same utility regardless of how many times you've done YC
before.

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tptacek
It's probably important to understand how DD is a forcing function _for
investors_. There are lots of ways to create forcing functions for operators,
but not so many ways to deterministically create them for investors.

~~~
rgbrgb
Yep, forgot that in my comment... 500+ warm intros means that if your pitch is
compelling (not a given) then there will be a lot of competition to invest.
This is naturally good for founders both in terms of pricing the round and
getting it done as quickly as possible.

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ivankirigin
This post is really long, but if there is something I've left out, feel free
to ask in the comments here.

I didn't say it explicitly: you should do YC if you get the chance.

~~~
ivankirigin
I should have mentioned Sam Altman more. It is pretty incredibly how he has
taken over the helm with so few problems and actually so much acceleration.
BAMF

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walterbell
_> Paul Graham is a kind of stateless incisive advice machine._

Could you expand on this assessment?

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rgbrgb
We met with him for 15 minutes, he didn't know anything about our company
going into it (the stateless part), but gave us amazing advice about how to
position ourselves and present our ideas to investors. I heard the same thing
from everyone else in the batch I talked to (the machine part).

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kurttheviking
This. The pearls are in the essays too. While some may not appreciate the
tenor, the underlying wisdom is applicable in any setting. Despite that fact,
many will find some reason to ignore the wisdom. I did. Only later did I
learn, that in fact, he was right all along.

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solve
Lots of interesting info.

I'm also interested in how the switch from 4 founding partners, to 20 partners
has affected what kind of companies they accept. Seems to be far more B2B and
marketplaces, whereas before there was more B2C.

Also seems to have been a strong shift toward later stage investing, now that
the funding amount has increased beyond 20k.

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ivankirigin
I think the interview process is really similar. They just have multiple
tracks. There are 3 to 5 partners in the room. They've refined it, but in
spirit it is really similar.

I think companies are getting later stage because YC's reputation is better.

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solve
I edited my comment. What I meant to say was the application acceptance step,
not the interviews.

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ivankirigin
There do seem to be a lot of B2B companies. There are certainly a broader
range of companies. I should have written about this more. The number of
biotech companies is staggering. I don't know anything about that tech, so
they all look the same to me ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

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JMiao
Thanks for sharing. I attended a miniconf recently and was blown away by the
scale YC's grown to. For what it's worth, I liked the slop, too.

