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What is YC's policy (or ethical guideline) about accepting multiple companies in the same domain? I know (some) VCs enforce an ethics guideline where they only

by kriro 11y ago

What is YC's policy (or ethical guideline) about accepting multiple companies in the same domain? I know (some) VCs enforce an ethics guideline where they only back one player per domain (A16Z does). Obviously it isn't always easy because you can't know in advance what startups morph into. Seems like Prompt and Chatfuel are fairly similar right now though. Any comments on this from YC and/or the Prompt/Chatfuel founders would be welcome :) Was this discussed at all when the decision to accept these two into the batch was made? Really curious how these situations are handled because it seems like it could be an even bigger issue for an accelerator like YC that takes more companies into the funnel than a typical later stage investor. A16Z mentions the limit to one player/domain as one of the more interesting constraints on their overall business model. I believe it's roughly on the same level as partner bandwidth.

tim333 11y ago
https://www.ycombinator.com/faq/#q8 https://www.ycombinator.com/faq/#q8 """Will you fund multiple startups working on the same idea? Yes. If you fund as many companies as we do it's unavoidable you'll end up with some overlap. Even if you tried not to accept competing companies, you'd still get overlap because startups' ideas morph so much. The way we deal with it is that when two startups are working on related stuff, we don't talk to one about what the other's doing. In practice it has not turned out to be a problem, because most big markets have room for several slightly different solutions, and it's unlikely that two startups would do precisely the same thing. """
argonaut 11y ago
This is not true at the seed stage. The back one player per domain rule is something usually only followed at series A and beyond. a16z, for example, does not have a policy of only backing one player at the seed stage. In fact, they scaled back seed investing years ago because despite this stated policy people still had this misconception. http://www.strictlyvc.com/2013/10/20/andreessen-horowitz-backs-seed-investing/ http://www.strictlyvc.com/2013/10/20/andreessen-horowitz-bac...

by kriro 11y ago

tim333 11y ago

https://www.ycombinator.com/faq/#q8 https://www.ycombinator.com/faq/#q8 """Will you fund multiple startups working on the same idea? Yes. If you fund as many companies as we do it's unavoidable you'll end up with some overlap. Even if you tried not to accept competing companies, you'd still get overlap because startups' ideas morph so much. The way we deal with it is that when two startups are working on related stuff, we don't talk to one about what the other's doing. In practice it has not turned out to be a problem, because most big markets have room for several slightly different solutions, and it's unlikely that two startups would do precisely the same thing. """

argonaut 11y ago

This is not true at the seed stage. The back one player per domain rule is something usually only followed at series A and beyond. a16z, for example, does not have a policy of only backing one player at the seed stage. In fact, they scaled back seed investing years ago because despite this stated policy people still had this misconception. http://www.strictlyvc.com/2013/10/20/andreessen-horowitz-backs-seed-investing/ http://www.strictlyvc.com/2013/10/20/andreessen-horowitz-bac...