Is it true that there are companies that demoed today but haven't launched - and that attendees had to sign an NDA to keep them 'off the record'?
(source: the tc.com post on this thread + twitter noise)
(source: the tc.com post on this thread + twitter noise)
YC doesn't require any NDA that I am aware of. I'd expect that the risk of being excluded from future demo day events if you disclosed off the record companies would be a better deterrent than an NDA in this case.
what happens is if a startup has not yet publicly launched and still wants to be able to give someone an exclusive/control how they launch then they mark themselves as off the record. what this prevents is someone briefly mentioning them in an article and then another publication refusing to write about them because it's already been 'covered'. if the startup doesn't care about this, then they keep themselves on record.
Does that happen? It seems impossibly childish.
With regard to the points Harj and others make in this thread about TechCrunch, I have no idea if they have a policy of turning up their nose at companies that have already been covered elsewhere. I certainly would never agree to YC's off-the-record request for that reason. I observe it because I think the YC companies deserve a chance to control how they make their first big public splash.