> YC wields power and can crowd out early stage investors YC IS an early stage investor. Early stage investing has been a cutthroat competitive market since be

> YC wields power and can crowd out early stage investors YC IS an early stage investor. Early stage investing has been a cutthroat competitive market since before YC existed to become yet another a competitor. YC started from zero, as an unknown, underfunded startup not even in California, against well-entrenched, large incubators like IdeaLab (funded by billionaire Bill Gross) etc. YC began to land deals and grow through innovation and risk-taking like offering better valuations, offering fixed terms that were standard on all deals, and by offering radical transparency. They probably weren't the very first to ever offer any of these but, as far as I know, they were the first to offer ALL of these innovations at once on every deal and to make that knowledge freely available to startups before they even made contact. Today these kinds of terms have become almost common but I've been around long enough to remember that when I first heard of YC's terms in their early days (probably year 2 or 3) it not only sounded radical - it sounded downright crazy. Every one of their innovations was dramatically more attractive and beneficial to startups than the status quo at the time. They single-handedly created the niche they now lead and earned every bit of their success in the wildly free market of early stage startup investing. Technical regulatory definitions aside, the idea that a true monopoly could even exist in startup investing is ridiculous on its face.