10 ms·

Everything I wish I had known about raising a seed round

207 points by mad 4y ago

0898 4y ago
How much equity do you typically give up in a seed round?
- Sammyadems1 4y ago
  The bigger question is how much equity do give up for 5mm when you have nothing but an idea? I don't get it..
- axg11 4y ago
  Typically 10-20% but the correct answer to this question is "it varies".
tnolet 4y ago
This post is all true. One caveat (which is mentioned in the post): this person has multiple VC’s in his network and knows multiple founders who have raised on nothing but a deck. Many, many, many future founders are not as lucky. So, I guess rule -1 is: get to know VC’s, Angels and other previously funded founders.
- pas 4y ago
  Oh yeah, that Figma post all again. 0 to 5M in 3 months, and "how much prep do I need" ... ahaha. Less "lucky" teams (eg. the other 99.9%) spend more time and end up with not even a million Schrute bucks. Of course there's also a 0.00..1% that is really lucky, finds something at the right time, with the right framing/context. All true, but somehow still very different.
- haasted 4y ago
  Yeah, reading the sentence "Before starting the fundraising process, my first stop was to call up some VC friends of mine and ask them how to get things going" made me roll my eyes. Rest of the article is interesting, though.
  - sirspacey 4y ago
    Why? Making friends with VCs before soliciting them for money is a smart move.
    - Centigonal 4y ago
      yes, but Matt Welsh has yet to write the Everything I Wish I Had Known About Making Friends with VCs companion article.
ageitgey 4y ago
My experience is that timing is a huge element. VC groups have teams that specialize in certain areas (biotech, hospitality, crypto, whatever), but those specialties change over time as the business landscape changes. If your pitch lands in the sweet spot of the kinds of things they are looking to fund right now (and you can back it up with experience/traction/team quality/whatever), you will have a relatively easy time raising money. If your idea is good but the timing isn't right for the VC market and they don't have people that understand your idea, you will have a very hard time raising money. Likewise, different VCs are experts in different areas (even between big name firms). We met VCs who knew our market extremely well and had a very deep network in our specific niche. We also met VCs where we had to explain the basic premise of our market from zero. Do some research to find the VCs that work in the niche you work to have the best chance of not only raising money quickly, but getting access to a network of people who can actually be beneficial to your company.
davidhunter 4y ago
For anyone reading this advice. The number 1 reason why Matt’s fundraising process went as well as it did is because he has a world-class personal track record. This dwarfs all other reasons by a long way. Quite frankly Matt would have been able to raise with complete air (assuming that his cofounders have similar personal track records). That’s not to take anything away from Matt. He’s clearly an accomplished individual and his advice is still sound. But he hasn’t included the glaringly obvious reason why he got funded - he was a professor in CS at Harvard and has had a string of prestigious roles in industry.
- baxtr 4y ago
  He is Ex-Google and Ex-Apple… so I guess it’s way easier for him to raise than for other people.
- ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
  Yes and he was also part of the boys club by knowing a bunch of VCs. Who you know is more important than what you are building in the modern game of venture capital.
  - Swizec 4y ago
    > Who you know is more important Networking is all about who knows you, not who you know.
    - ksec 4y ago
      >Networking is all about who knows you, not who you know. Need to steal that. And is this a reason why Twitter, Social Media, and self branding on the internet are so important? Since it is all who knows you?
      - Swizec 4y ago
        Yes and the luck surface area. Your amount-of-luck is the surface area of a rectangle. A side is the interestingness of what you do, B side is how many know about it. The bigger the rectangle, the more opportunities you get. https://swizec.com/blog/your-luck-and-opportunity-surface-area/ https://swizec.com/blog/your-luck-and-opportunity-surface-ar... This is how you get opportunities when you aren’t even in the room. Someone says ”Oh yeah I know <ksec>, they’re doing cool things X in the area you just mentioned an interest in”. Or ”Oh yeah for problem Y, you should ping <ksec>, they’re the expert”
api 4y ago
A few things I've learned: 1. SAFEs are convenient if everyone is amenable, but be careful about having SAFEs sitting around too long or with different terms. They're like the Mogwai in the Gremlins films. They're kind and cuddly unless you feed them after midnight or get them wet. 2. Stay in touch with your angels even if they don't initiate. It'll help in tons of ways and they can interpret lack of contact as a sign that you're dying and that they shouldn't think about you anymore. This isn't good. 3. Be careful about any terms (e.g. in side letters) that might allow someone to stand in the way of a priced round in the future. Even if someone doesn't use them to play hardball for terms (they can), it might make things inconvenient and add dangerous delays. 4. Have a lawyer look things over BEFORE you get into priced round negotiations with VCs or you might end up dragging the process out and risking losing the deal because the lawyers find a problem that needs fixing. 5. If you use standard/canned documents, check (3). Generally all this boils down to: keep terms simple and universal as much as possible, be communicative, and don't let things sit too long. It's possible to do a priced round without a lead if you have SAFEs/notes sitting around too long. You can use standard documents to minimize legal. It may be necessary to clean up your cap table.
- elcomet 4y ago
  > 1. SAFEs are convenient if everyone is amenable, but be careful about having SAFEs sitting around too long or with different terms. They're like the Mogwai in the Gremlins films. They're kind and cuddly unless you feed them after midnight or get them wet. Your analogy is funny but you don't actually explain why SAFEs are dangerous, could you develop?
  - api 4y ago
    If you have SAFEs with different terms the calculations for your cap table can become onerous and complicated and confusing. If things get confusing some SAFE holders might feel like they're getting a worse deal than others, which can cause acrimony on your investor team. If they sit around too long the risk of these things increases. SAFEs are so easy someone can offer to invest and you say yes and BAM you sign one... without bothering to carefully look over all previous SAFEs etc. and make sure terms are in line with expectations. They're almost too easy to execute. My analogy came from the fact that if you have these problems you can get a complexity explosion during the next priced round. KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) is really the TL;DR.
thecupisblue 4y ago
Looking at this as a founder thats currently raising a seed round (or pre-seed, tho as I understand, same position as OP) in Europe with an MVP. Some parts ring true, as in VC's you never heard of contacting you on LinkedIn, sharing decks between their contacts and keeping in touch to build a relationship. The part about common pitch deck advice being geared towards live pitches especially - we haven't done a single pitch with a deck live. If it was a live meeting, they've already seen the deck or we've done a short pitch over zoom already. The "stand in a meeting room and pitch to VC's" thing is mostly a myth nowadays. But a 5 million raise without even having a product just sounds insane. We've been offered 50-100k offers due to our team and product, but rarely anyone wants to invest more than that in a pre-revenue/pre-launch startup. And if they do, they would do it in tranches and by the time they would invest 500k we'd be giving them more than 20% equity. The difference in valuations is just insane, with even VCs straight-up telling us that if we were raising in US we'd be offered 5-10x more than here. Honestly, this whole ride makes me think I should just get a job at a US startup and use the cost of living difference to pay devs out of my own salary.
- syedkarim 4y ago
  >>with even VCs straight-up telling us that if we were raising in US we'd be offered 5-10x more than here Serious question: Then why even remotely bother raising from European VCs? Doing so is clearly not in your best interest. Is it a matter of pride?
  - davidhunter 4y ago
    Very few US VCs will/can invest in non-US companies at the seed stage.
    - baxtr 4y ago
      What does non-US mean? European Founders could register a Delaware company. Is that good enough?
      - 4y ago
aliqot 4y ago
Might be a very unpopular opinion here, but the overall attitude I'm seeing IRL these days is favoring bootstrapping. I asked why and was told essentially suits provide a very specific and targeted value with limited application outside of those areas. It's no longer an accelerator for an exit, it's someone buying the position of your employer and the choices are no longer yours to make. I can see that.
silverlake 4y ago
I raised a few $M with just 10 slides during the VC frenzy last year. I agree with the post but I view this from a social angle. The entire VC industry is driven by BullShit. VCs raise money from LPs (pensions, rich people) by claiming they have deal flow (they can get into the next big thing) and an “investing thesis” (some BS about the future, usually a bombastic spin on a current fad). VCs are finance bros that believe their own BS. Your pitch should fit the current investing zeitgeist. If you pitch some oddball idea then you need to move your audience from 0 to 100% in 1 hr. If you pitch “AI generated metaverse for basketweaving” then the background hype has sold half your story. But also, VCs need other VCs to co-invest. They need to explain this investment to their LPs. It’s easier to pitch AI nonsense than something truly novel. Every VC wants to see Matt’s pitch because he’s got a great resume. VCs don’t invest alone, so they will pass the deck around to their VC network. But it’s also sharing deal flow: I send you this, please send me the decks you’ve got. VCs like to keep their options open. Even if they hate your idea, if A16Z invests then they’ll want to get back in. Or if you succeed then they’ll want to get into the next round. I had a VC offer a very low valuation. When I got 10X more elsewhere, they called back that they wanted in. The numbers are all BS: valuations, seed size, etc. Remember, their goal is to invest as cheaply as possible. Your goal is to sell as little of your company as possible. Strangely, BS artists love other BS artists. Adam Neumann is a God-tier bullshit messiah with sociopathic self-confidence. It’s no wonder that he raised billions after the self-dealing disaster at WeWork. Matt is right: confidence is insanely important. Your company is a $1T opportunity that will change the course of humanity. (In fact, outrageous confidence is important everywhere. Humans are just really gullible fools.)
keeptrying 4y ago
He got funded because: He was a Prof CS at Harvard. He did hit on the most imp point: be confident in your pitch. Like 200% more confident than you are about anything. I can’t overemphasize this. This is more important than anything else.
indymike 4y ago
If you are in a flyover state, learn about venture tax credits and other startup investment incentives. You can often get investors a state tax credit that is up to 25% of the amount they invest. For angels, this is basically a 25% discount on their investment, and substantially reduces financial risk. Also, at least until you take in institutional money, being an LLC can unlock loss cary-forwards for your investors.
- uranium 4y ago
  +1 this helps even if your angels are out of state. At least in Kansas, they can sell the tax credit to someone in-state for maybe 80% of its face value.
uptownfunk 4y ago
Seems like the author here had a much easier time than most people I know who have had to fund raise.. is it really that easy?
FL33TW00D 4y ago
This tweet from Roon applies: https://twitter.com/tszzl/status/1573564546052067328 https://twitter.com/tszzl/status/1573564546052067328
steve76 4y ago
manv1 4y ago
One interesting thing I learned from my previous startup is that when you're raising, you need to find investors that understand your market. The more niche the market, the more difficult it'll be for you to find an investor. But when you find that investor the likelihood of them investing will be higher. Why is that? Because if you have to educate your VC as to what you're doing, you've lost. Let's say I'm building an AI that helps agencies set pricing for their ad inventory. Ideally I would want a VC that understands adtech, because they already understand the problems in that field (at some level) and how big it us. I don't have to explain how much of a fucking pain in the ass it is to manage all the line items, creatives, placements, and pricing rules. Someone who wasn't in adtech would be like "google's GAM does that for you." Uh, not really. A VC in adtech would be all "here's my money and a LOC." And, the VC will be able to help you with some client introductions, so you can get more customers. That said, my business co-founder couldn't sell water to a man in the desert, so we crashed and burned. Live and learn.
nakedrobot2 4y ago
Sorry but is this a f*ing satire article? Ex-google ex-apple guy calls up his VC friends to ask how to raise a $5M (!!!!) seed round? For god's sake. It's something straight out of the Silicon Valley TV series.
- intelVISA 4y ago
  Hard to tell with venture capital
- jiveturkey 4y ago
  it's just standard SEO fare. don't read too much into it.
- darkarmani 4y ago
  He just needed to "neg" some VCs by crapping on them to get a better term sheet.
iovrthoughtthis 4y ago
"Before starting the fundraising process, my first stop was to call up some VC friends of mine and ask them how to get things going." ah, so it is
exhibitapp 4y ago
wizwit999 4y ago
Asking your VCs if you should do YC is a funny conflict of interest, of course they're gonna say no.
blobbers 4y ago
I wish I knew more about the company, perhaps even a slide deck. It might make some of the ideas easier to connect with! Anyone have a link to the deck?
lucidlive 4y ago
This article is not useful for a typical entrepreneur. Most work for many years with little chance of raising capital. This guy makes it sound like all you need is some experience and a good idea. And now he’s writing a “all I learned” article about his past 3 months. Give me a break. (And no offence OP but I do feel it sounds out of touch)
gray_50 4y ago
I disagree with your approach on deciding if YC is worth it. I feel like VCs are particularly biased against YC and are incentivized to tell you it's not worth it. I think what you should have done is also seek out as many YC alumni as you can and ask what their opinion was. I guarantee you all of them would've said it's worth it.
nocoiner 4y ago
I felt like I wasted time reading this. It was someone with a terrific network talking about how amazing he is (yet with limited substantiation how that translated to success), with shitty DALL-E artwork interspersed between paragraphs. Yawn. Been there, seen that.

207 points by mad 4y ago

0898 4y ago

How much equity do you typically give up in a seed round?

Sammyadems1 4y ago
The bigger question is how much equity do give up for 5mm when you have nothing but an idea? I don't get it..
axg11 4y ago
Typically 10-20% but the correct answer to this question is "it varies".

tnolet 4y ago

This post is all true. One caveat (which is mentioned in the post): this person has multiple VC’s in his network and knows multiple founders who have raised on nothing but a deck. Many, many, many future founders are not as lucky. So, I guess rule -1 is: get to know VC’s, Angels and other previously funded founders.

pas 4y ago
Oh yeah, that Figma post all again. 0 to 5M in 3 months, and "how much prep do I need" ... ahaha. Less "lucky" teams (eg. the other 99.9%) spend more time and end up with not even a million Schrute bucks. Of course there's also a 0.00..1% that is really lucky, finds something at the right time, with the right framing/context. All true, but somehow still very different.
haasted 4y ago
Yeah, reading the sentence "Before starting the fundraising process, my first stop was to call up some VC friends of mine and ask them how to get things going" made me roll my eyes. Rest of the article is interesting, though.
- sirspacey 4y ago
  Why? Making friends with VCs before soliciting them for money is a smart move.
  - Centigonal 4y ago
    yes, but Matt Welsh has yet to write the Everything I Wish I Had Known About Making Friends with VCs companion article.

ageitgey 4y ago

My experience is that timing is a huge element. VC groups have teams that specialize in certain areas (biotech, hospitality, crypto, whatever), but those specialties change over time as the business landscape changes. If your pitch lands in the sweet spot of the kinds of things they are looking to fund right now (and you can back it up with experience/traction/team quality/whatever), you will have a relatively easy time raising money. If your idea is good but the timing isn't right for the VC market and they don't have people that understand your idea, you will have a very hard time raising money. Likewise, different VCs are experts in different areas (even between big name firms). We met VCs who knew our market extremely well and had a very deep network in our specific niche. We also met VCs where we had to explain the basic premise of our market from zero. Do some research to find the VCs that work in the niche you work to have the best chance of not only raising money quickly, but getting access to a network of people who can actually be beneficial to your company.

davidhunter 4y ago

For anyone reading this advice. The number 1 reason why Matt’s fundraising process went as well as it did is because he has a world-class personal track record. This dwarfs all other reasons by a long way. Quite frankly Matt would have been able to raise with complete air (assuming that his cofounders have similar personal track records). That’s not to take anything away from Matt. He’s clearly an accomplished individual and his advice is still sound. But he hasn’t included the glaringly obvious reason why he got funded - he was a professor in CS at Harvard and has had a string of prestigious roles in industry.

baxtr 4y ago
He is Ex-Google and Ex-Apple… so I guess it’s way easier for him to raise than for other people.
ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
Yes and he was also part of the boys club by knowing a bunch of VCs. Who you know is more important than what you are building in the modern game of venture capital.
- Swizec 4y ago
  > Who you know is more important Networking is all about who knows you, not who you know.
  - ksec 4y ago
    >Networking is all about who knows you, not who you know. Need to steal that. And is this a reason why Twitter, Social Media, and self branding on the internet are so important? Since it is all who knows you?
    - Swizec 4y ago
      Yes and the luck surface area. Your amount-of-luck is the surface area of a rectangle. A side is the interestingness of what you do, B side is how many know about it. The bigger the rectangle, the more opportunities you get. https://swizec.com/blog/your-luck-and-opportunity-surface-area/ https://swizec.com/blog/your-luck-and-opportunity-surface-ar... This is how you get opportunities when you aren’t even in the room. Someone says ”Oh yeah I know <ksec>, they’re doing cool things X in the area you just mentioned an interest in”. Or ”Oh yeah for problem Y, you should ping <ksec>, they’re the expert”

api 4y ago

A few things I've learned: 1. SAFEs are convenient if everyone is amenable, but be careful about having SAFEs sitting around too long or with different terms. They're like the Mogwai in the Gremlins films. They're kind and cuddly unless you feed them after midnight or get them wet. 2. Stay in touch with your angels even if they don't initiate. It'll help in tons of ways and they can interpret lack of contact as a sign that you're dying and that they shouldn't think about you anymore. This isn't good. 3. Be careful about any terms (e.g. in side letters) that might allow someone to stand in the way of a priced round in the future. Even if someone doesn't use them to play hardball for terms (they can), it might make things inconvenient and add dangerous delays. 4. Have a lawyer look things over BEFORE you get into priced round negotiations with VCs or you might end up dragging the process out and risking losing the deal because the lawyers find a problem that needs fixing. 5. If you use standard/canned documents, check (3). Generally all this boils down to: keep terms simple and universal as much as possible, be communicative, and don't let things sit too long. It's possible to do a priced round without a lead if you have SAFEs/notes sitting around too long. You can use standard documents to minimize legal. It may be necessary to clean up your cap table.

elcomet 4y ago
> 1. SAFEs are convenient if everyone is amenable, but be careful about having SAFEs sitting around too long or with different terms. They're like the Mogwai in the Gremlins films. They're kind and cuddly unless you feed them after midnight or get them wet. Your analogy is funny but you don't actually explain why SAFEs are dangerous, could you develop?
- api 4y ago
  If you have SAFEs with different terms the calculations for your cap table can become onerous and complicated and confusing. If things get confusing some SAFE holders might feel like they're getting a worse deal than others, which can cause acrimony on your investor team. If they sit around too long the risk of these things increases. SAFEs are so easy someone can offer to invest and you say yes and BAM you sign one... without bothering to carefully look over all previous SAFEs etc. and make sure terms are in line with expectations. They're almost too easy to execute. My analogy came from the fact that if you have these problems you can get a complexity explosion during the next priced round. KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) is really the TL;DR.

thecupisblue 4y ago

Looking at this as a founder thats currently raising a seed round (or pre-seed, tho as I understand, same position as OP) in Europe with an MVP. Some parts ring true, as in VC's you never heard of contacting you on LinkedIn, sharing decks between their contacts and keeping in touch to build a relationship. The part about common pitch deck advice being geared towards live pitches especially - we haven't done a single pitch with a deck live. If it was a live meeting, they've already seen the deck or we've done a short pitch over zoom already. The "stand in a meeting room and pitch to VC's" thing is mostly a myth nowadays. But a 5 million raise without even having a product just sounds insane. We've been offered 50-100k offers due to our team and product, but rarely anyone wants to invest more than that in a pre-revenue/pre-launch startup. And if they do, they would do it in tranches and by the time they would invest 500k we'd be giving them more than 20% equity. The difference in valuations is just insane, with even VCs straight-up telling us that if we were raising in US we'd be offered 5-10x more than here. Honestly, this whole ride makes me think I should just get a job at a US startup and use the cost of living difference to pay devs out of my own salary.

syedkarim 4y ago
>>with even VCs straight-up telling us that if we were raising in US we'd be offered 5-10x more than here Serious question: Then why even remotely bother raising from European VCs? Doing so is clearly not in your best interest. Is it a matter of pride?
- davidhunter 4y ago
  Very few US VCs will/can invest in non-US companies at the seed stage.
  - baxtr 4y ago
    What does non-US mean? European Founders could register a Delaware company. Is that good enough?
    - 4y ago

aliqot 4y ago

Might be a very unpopular opinion here, but the overall attitude I'm seeing IRL these days is favoring bootstrapping. I asked why and was told essentially suits provide a very specific and targeted value with limited application outside of those areas. It's no longer an accelerator for an exit, it's someone buying the position of your employer and the choices are no longer yours to make. I can see that.

silverlake 4y ago

I raised a few $M with just 10 slides during the VC frenzy last year. I agree with the post but I view this from a social angle. The entire VC industry is driven by BullShit. VCs raise money from LPs (pensions, rich people) by claiming they have deal flow (they can get into the next big thing) and an “investing thesis” (some BS about the future, usually a bombastic spin on a current fad). VCs are finance bros that believe their own BS. Your pitch should fit the current investing zeitgeist. If you pitch some oddball idea then you need to move your audience from 0 to 100% in 1 hr. If you pitch “AI generated metaverse for basketweaving” then the background hype has sold half your story. But also, VCs need other VCs to co-invest. They need to explain this investment to their LPs. It’s easier to pitch AI nonsense than something truly novel. Every VC wants to see Matt’s pitch because he’s got a great resume. VCs don’t invest alone, so they will pass the deck around to their VC network. But it’s also sharing deal flow: I send you this, please send me the decks you’ve got. VCs like to keep their options open. Even if they hate your idea, if A16Z invests then they’ll want to get back in. Or if you succeed then they’ll want to get into the next round. I had a VC offer a very low valuation. When I got 10X more elsewhere, they called back that they wanted in. The numbers are all BS: valuations, seed size, etc. Remember, their goal is to invest as cheaply as possible. Your goal is to sell as little of your company as possible. Strangely, BS artists love other BS artists. Adam Neumann is a God-tier bullshit messiah with sociopathic self-confidence. It’s no wonder that he raised billions after the self-dealing disaster at WeWork. Matt is right: confidence is insanely important. Your company is a $1T opportunity that will change the course of humanity. (In fact, outrageous confidence is important everywhere. Humans are just really gullible fools.)

keeptrying 4y ago

He got funded because: He was a Prof CS at Harvard. He did hit on the most imp point: be confident in your pitch. Like 200% more confident than you are about anything. I can’t overemphasize this. This is more important than anything else.

indymike 4y ago

If you are in a flyover state, learn about venture tax credits and other startup investment incentives. You can often get investors a state tax credit that is up to 25% of the amount they invest. For angels, this is basically a 25% discount on their investment, and substantially reduces financial risk. Also, at least until you take in institutional money, being an LLC can unlock loss cary-forwards for your investors.

uranium 4y ago
+1 this helps even if your angels are out of state. At least in Kansas, they can sell the tax credit to someone in-state for maybe 80% of its face value.

uptownfunk 4y ago

Seems like the author here had a much easier time than most people I know who have had to fund raise.. is it really that easy?

FL33TW00D 4y ago

This tweet from Roon applies: https://twitter.com/tszzl/status/1573564546052067328 https://twitter.com/tszzl/status/1573564546052067328

steve76 4y ago

manv1 4y ago

One interesting thing I learned from my previous startup is that when you're raising, you need to find investors that understand your market. The more niche the market, the more difficult it'll be for you to find an investor. But when you find that investor the likelihood of them investing will be higher. Why is that? Because if you have to educate your VC as to what you're doing, you've lost. Let's say I'm building an AI that helps agencies set pricing for their ad inventory. Ideally I would want a VC that understands adtech, because they already understand the problems in that field (at some level) and how big it us. I don't have to explain how much of a fucking pain in the ass it is to manage all the line items, creatives, placements, and pricing rules. Someone who wasn't in adtech would be like "google's GAM does that for you." Uh, not really. A VC in adtech would be all "here's my money and a LOC." And, the VC will be able to help you with some client introductions, so you can get more customers. That said, my business co-founder couldn't sell water to a man in the desert, so we crashed and burned. Live and learn.

nakedrobot2 4y ago

Sorry but is this a f*ing satire article? Ex-google ex-apple guy calls up his VC friends to ask how to raise a $5M (!!!!) seed round? For god's sake. It's something straight out of the Silicon Valley TV series.

intelVISA 4y ago
Hard to tell with venture capital
jiveturkey 4y ago
it's just standard SEO fare. don't read too much into it.
darkarmani 4y ago
He just needed to "neg" some VCs by crapping on them to get a better term sheet.

iovrthoughtthis 4y ago

"Before starting the fundraising process, my first stop was to call up some VC friends of mine and ask them how to get things going." ah, so it is

exhibitapp 4y ago

wizwit999 4y ago

Asking your VCs if you should do YC is a funny conflict of interest, of course they're gonna say no.

blobbers 4y ago

I wish I knew more about the company, perhaps even a slide deck. It might make some of the ideas easier to connect with! Anyone have a link to the deck?

lucidlive 4y ago

This article is not useful for a typical entrepreneur. Most work for many years with little chance of raising capital. This guy makes it sound like all you need is some experience and a good idea. And now he’s writing a “all I learned” article about his past 3 months. Give me a break. (And no offence OP but I do feel it sounds out of touch)

gray_50 4y ago

I disagree with your approach on deciding if YC is worth it. I feel like VCs are particularly biased against YC and are incentivized to tell you it's not worth it. I think what you should have done is also seek out as many YC alumni as you can and ask what their opinion was. I guarantee you all of them would've said it's worth it.

nocoiner 4y ago

I felt like I wasted time reading this. It was someone with a terrific network talking about how amazing he is (yet with limited substantiation how that translated to success), with shitty DALL-E artwork interspersed between paragraphs. Yawn. Been there, seen that.