4 ms·
Id guess that YC has a much greater competitive moat in the former. It's much "easier" to do late stage investing - a few big transactions instead of many many
by cm2012 4y ago
Id guess that YC has a much greater competitive moat in the former. It's much "easier" to do late stage investing - a few big transactions instead of many many small ones, and everyone's working with the same information.
Very few places have the infrastructure to deal with large volumes of start-ups + a lead flow of small companies trying to join YC, so there's no acquisition costs. Add to that, YC's experience with small start-ups compounds - they can probably predict start-up success way better than competitors at this point. That's almost certainly not true for late stage investing.
- danvoell 4y agoI would think having seed stage investments would offer additional late stage moat. My first thought was that the current down round later stage environment is squeezing a ton of common equity founders/execs. Its tough to be both founder friendly and investing at later stage prices that leave many startup execs low in equity/motivation.
- harry8 4y agoA bunch of possibly clever, technically adept people hang out here even if they work for a bank or something equally dull. Some small percentage of them have a latest idea and also decide to explore pursuing it. Where to go? Everyone here knows YC is one place. What else have you got? Anyone got a list? How do you find out about the people involved, like on a scale of x to y how shonky are they? etc. I would guess taking over the slashdot space with some incremental improvement to that formula has created one hell of a pipeline that competitors struggle to match. Hence paying @dang full time here and whatever other costs there are associated.