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YC is a fantastic shortcut to the Bay Area market. They protect you from abusive investors, attract talent and entice new customers. Farther you are from the Ba
by doh 6y ago
YC is a fantastic shortcut to the Bay Area market. They protect you from abusive investors, attract talent and entice new customers. Farther you are from the Bay Area, less helpful they are though.
Even in the Bay you can do it all by yourself, but it's much more complicated route filled with negative experiences. At least that's my experience. The way we were treated by highly celebrated investors was hard to swallow. Anytime I spoke to a YC alumni friend they have striking, opposite experience.
With companies mostly operating remotely, I think the value is now dropping, but is far from non-existent, especially for new founders. It's like a university degree. You can have equal or larger knowledge if you put the work into it.
- zapita 6y agoEven if you operate far from the Bay Area, you might still want to raise money there. In which case YC is extremely valuable, especially for outsiders.
- doh 6y agoThat's a good point. Essentially YC is a guard dog for the Bay Area. If you want to get in, then there is no better organization to help you out, keep the deals clean and founder abuse low.
- langitbiru 6y ago"abusive investors" -> Tell me more about them.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- gogopuppygogo 6y agoEver been threatened with a lawsuit by an Angel with full time counsel at their disposal because you haven’t hit revenue targets in year one? Ever had that investor write up a pedantic missive about your startup to mock their own investment? Hostile investors are real and awful. Shielding startups from toxic money is a thing.
- langitbiru 6y agoWe should have Glassdoor but for investors.
- rtx 6y agoThey will buy it.
- giancarlostoro 6y agoSounds like we should still do it to make a profit from toxic angel investors ;)
- xenospn 6y agoHere you go: https://www.vcguide.co https://www.vcguide.co
- langitbiru 6y agoI read the reviews for YC. There are three VCs from YC (in this website). They got 1, 7, and 10 marks on a scale from 1-10.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- doh 6y agoI believe this was meant as a sarcasm, but in a chance that it wasn't here are some extreme cases (these are all different investors): - they asked me to pay for attendance in their seminar that will teach me how to raise money before they consider investing - I got stood up for a meeting with no word from the person. He followed up two weeks later that they are not interested. 3 years later we met at an event thrown by one of our investors and this person, after listening to me talking about the company, approached me for an investment opportunity - I got introduced to a guy that never responded. I got reintroduced to him 4 times! on his own request, but he never replied. When we finally closed our first round he sent a note to our lead investor that he is very interested to be introduced to the company. Guess what. We never heard from him - I was "forced" to explain our technology in an extreme detail (we use proprietary algorithms) after which I was told that this doesn't make any sense because he knows better and I'm wrong. I wrote the code - I was asked to fly in for a meeting to NYC which should've been a final handshake after weeks of talking. They said that without meeting in person they can't close the deal. As I was sitting in their lobby, an assistant explained to me that he is busy today, lets reschedule for a date two weeks out - a fund spent 9 months on due diligence, covering every single cranny and nook of the company. Gave us a term sheet, pushed for a closing and then refused to sign their own papers. We owed hundreds of thousands in legal fees and almost closed the shop. I wrote about it a bit here [0] This is just a selection of them. There were many more. This was the time it was suggested to me to apply for YC to get better treatment. Unfortunately YC passed and I never tried again. Things changed quite significantly when we turned profit and started generating tens of millions of dollars [1]. But the path was quite painful. [0] https://turek.co/2017/12/from-near-bankruptcy-to-profitability-in-4-months/ https://turek.co/2017/12/from-near-bankruptcy-to-profitabili... [1] https://mobile.twitter.com/synopsi/status/1207722432091455488 https://mobile.twitter.com/synopsi/status/120772243209145548...