3 ms·
Didn’t YC already try this with Yuri Milner ten or so years ago? From what I remember they canceled it because it was creating zombie companies, where the found
by arrel 5y ago
Didn’t YC already try this with Yuri Milner ten or so years ago? From what I remember they canceled it because it was creating zombie companies, where the founders felt like they couldn’t give up on a bad idea because they still had so much runway.
- tabbott 5y agoI have no inside information on this but I think it may have had more to do with concerns about whether they wanted to be encouraging every YC company to take Yuri Milner's money. See e.g.: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/05/world/yuri-milner-facebook-twitter-russia.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/05/world/yuri-milner-faceboo... Also the total funds at the time was ~$150K, aka roughly what YC was doing before this announcement: https://techcrunch.com/2011/01/28/yuri-milner-sv-angel-offer-every-new-y-combinator-startup-150k/ https://techcrunch.com/2011/01/28/yuri-milner-sv-angel-offer... (I believe the history is that at the time, YC didn't have the free cash flow themselves to invest in every YC startup).
- Liron 5y agoI'm confident that the Ron Conway / Yuri Milner "Start Fund" idea worked out great financially, although I think one difference is that it was optional while this new deal is mandatory, so there might have been a significant selection effect (positive or negative), e.g. I'm not sure if Coinbase (YC S12) took the deal and that would matter a lot to the returns.