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Sama, how does this commitment to fund companies for life, up to $300 million valuation combine with your own belief that current funding rounds might be bubbly
by logicallee 11y ago
Sama, how does this commitment to fund companies for life, up to $300 million valuation combine with your own belief that current funding rounds might be bubbly: specifically does this not substantially raise the bar for applicant companies that you are not sure about, by eliciting in you the natural reasoning while you're thinking about YC applications: "Interesting idea. On the other hand this idea may suck. I'm not decided. But if it does suck they may still continue to raise rounds until the overvaluation climate is corrected, and we are committed to funnelling them money while they do. Then it will correct, and since the idea sucks we will lose money. So, we won't invest now, it's too big of a commitment. If they build the idea elsewhere and it turns out not to suck, we can reconsider then."
The direct effect of this is that "backtesting" this reasoning would have resulted in many of your biggest successes, simply not being funded at all. (Because they were too large gambles.)
Note: due to the provocative question I would have preferred to ask you by email, but I think it just gets routed away and you don't see my emails.
- sama 11y agoit doesn't effect our decision making. the best companies end up raising most of the money--we've looked at this in detail.
- logicallee 11y agothanks, agreed on your second point.