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The thing is, if you're good enough for YC, you can get $14k for ~0% of equity elsewhere.
by nawitus 13y ago
The thing is, if you're good enough for YC, you can get $14k for ~0% of equity elsewhere.
- wdewind 13y ago6% is good for the founder too. You want your investors to have a significant stake in the company so that they actually help build it, and you want to take on investors feeling like they will by definition give you a smaller piece of a larger pie. If you give them too little they wont help you at all.
- nawitus 13y agoIt's cheaper to pay people to help instead of giving equity.
- wdewind 13y agoYou can't afford the investor's time if your investors are people who will really help you. An investor does a LOT more than give you money.
- nik_adhia1 13y agoTom who just commented on this above ^ - he's GoCardless (awesome tech btw!), one of the leading startups disrupting payments/direct debit in the London scene. They've been going from strength to strength and recently raised another huge round. Definitely validation that YC works and gives value.
- tomblomfield 13y agoThat's demonstrably untrue. My company, based in London, couldn't even secure meetings with VC funds before we got accepted to YC. The week after we got accepted, every major VC firm in London called us. 3 years later, we've raised more than $10m in funding from Accel Partners & Balderton.
- nostrademons 13y agoYou can get $14K by working for a big company in Silicon Valley for a month or two. I think the point Paul was making - which you haven't addressed at all - is that you get far more than money from going through YC, and most of the other things you get (eg. the network and brand name) can't be replicated anywhere, for any amount of money.