You can still sell equity for cash as a YC company - many do, in fact! As an aside, I think your numbers are a bit unrealistic. Even if you were to sell 4% fo

You can still sell equity for cash as a YC company - many do, in fact! As an aside, I think your numbers are a bit unrealistic. Even if you were to sell 4% for $1m, that's a $25m valuation. That's definitely higher than what most YC companies are worth prior to entering YC (and even right afterwards).