YC W20 Online Demo Day moved up due to investor interest | Hacker News Reader

YC W20 Online Demo Day moved up due to investor interest

blog.ycombinator.com

90 pointscoolswan37 comments

I'm glad they're moving Demo Day up. The whole point of YC is to level the playing field for all kinds of founders, and this would help keep the focus on Demo Day rather than the behind-the-scene investor meetings that tend to benefit connected, established founders.

Personally, as a YC W19, first-time founder of Wanderlog [1], I didn't do any fundraising before Demo Day. But I heard from friends in the batch about cold emails, "informal" dinners, and all kinds of shenanigans to get ahold of founders earlier.

Demo Day helps even things out by giving attention to all startups in YC, and not just the companies with connections. Everyone's given the same amount of time on stage, and off stage (in any other year), everybody's milling about in a huge hall. You can't tell who's the recent college dropout, and who's a former co-founder of a co. with a billion-dollar exit.

I can totally see investors really taking the coronavirus/lack of an in-person Demo Day [2] as an excuse to double-up on their outreach, leading to an even more imbalanced process. Good work on the YC Partners' part for short-circuiting this and helping the first-time founders and the traditionally disadvantaged

[1] A trip planner for vacation itineraries: https://wanderlog.com

[2] https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-w20-online-demo-day-now-on-m...

>and who's a former co-founder of a co. with a billion-dollar exit

I know your point wasn't entirely literal but it made me curious as to how many YC founders are in this position...Kyle with Twitch and then Cruise is the only one that comes to mind.

Suhail from Mixpanel (S19) and Laks from Zenefits (W19, my batch) were both in recent batches! So they definitely exist. Much more common is the non-huge-exit but still successful second-time founders

Mixpanel got acquired? I don't think Suhail had an exit (yet).

Despite posting on HN a lot I don't know much about how YC works. You seem to be implying that reaching investors before demo day is "cheating" somehow, and that it's not in the spirit of YC to do it. What benefit is there to your startup in trying to keep things balanced? Obviously you don't want to sabotage other startups in your cohort, but I can't figure out why talking to investors as early as you can would be seen as doing that.

The advice we get from Y Combinator (which I think is extremely valid) is to focus on our product and customers, because that's ultimately what investors are going to look at. Fundraising is distracting, emotionally draining, and unproductive if you don't have those. If you're spending half your time during the program fundraising, that's half the time not spent on more important tasks

That makes sense. Cheers.

> all kinds of shenanigans

I don’t understand - why do you care if another company fundraises or not? What’s it go to do with you? YC isn’t some kind of competition is it?

Think on the margin. If there’s a particularly good batch of startups probably the amount invested will be greater than average but I doubt it will be exactly proportional to quality. In the long run the ecosystem would adjust to higher quality by attracting more funding. But a company only goes through Demo Day once and they’re all competing for the capital of VCs and angels, which capital is probably medium term flexible but isn’t in the short run.

But again what business is it of yours if someone else is faster out of the gate than you? This is like complaining that another company is better at marketing than you. I guess that's bad for you, but not their problem.

I guess the premise of his comment is that there is a finite amount of money to be invested across all YC participants each season and that “back room” deals prevent startups that are less connected from having the same opportunity. Demo day could be seen as a way for all startups to compete for that finite investment on equal terms.

That’s not to say that I agree with the premise that it’s a zero-sum game. At the same time I can see eager investors losing interest in hearing from other startups after securing investments in the hot startup earlier on. A lot of startup investing isn’t merit-based, it’s more about hype and gossip than you’d expect.

1) YC may not be, but fundraising is a competition (https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/09/sequoia-is-giving-away-21-...)

2) Herd Mentality: There is subtle signaling if a company being presented right beside you already has 50% of their round closed, vs a company that hasnt received this early interest.

These are not my ideals (I'm a fan of self-funding and sustainable growth), just the reality.

Have done demo day twice, and I can confirm. It was way, way worse the second time around. Lots of companies had filled out their rounds by demo day, despite the official YC advice (i.e. "don't fundraise until demo day").

Also, it's not a subtle effect at all, particularly now that demo day is split up into batches with similar companies grouped together. If you're presenting on the same day as some company close to your space that has raised millions, it looks bad. Investors routinely ask who else has invested in your company. If company X has a long list of name investors and you don't, investors want to put their money in company X. It's a downside of the dynamics of the feeding frenzy created by demo day -- investors have little to go on, so they make a big deal out of herd signaling.

Obviously, this doesn't matter for the hottest deals, but most companies in a batch aren't hot deals, and the hot deals don't need demo day in the first place.

Capital is not unlimited. Many investors, particularly angels, only make x investments each demo day. If they reach x before you've even talked to them, that's bad.

Also - the first thing many investors asked us at demo day was "who else is investing?" - hard to answer this when you've specifically been instructed not to fundraise yet.

Seems like a classic case of market unraveling:

http://marketdesigner.blogspot.com/2009/06/unraveling.html

This is smart. If coronavirus is growing by a factor of 10 per week then we are all going to be in lockdown/isolation in two weeks time and probably not focusing on doing seed deals.

My thinking exactly.

Ancillary to this health wave being an exception. Here is what I posted on Twitter earlier: "Business owners with unaligned or rigid products or services unable to adapt are actively sinking. I’ve halted most everything and have never felt so much pressure to iterate for something and the coming months of shifting consumer priorities."

I'm sure that played a huge part, if not the main reason why the date is moved up. That makes sense.

>>They can sort companies by industry and geography, and will be able to export the list of companies to a spreadsheet.

4 days ago I commented here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22506013

“I think YC should add a sheet for us to write our comments/ratings and decision” I shared my experience on how I get bored and excited.

Many people reached out since then asking me to share my spreadsheet. This sheet will be very helpful.

Whether YC partners read my comment or not I’m so grateful for this feature.

THANK YOU YC<3

Would love to see the spreadsheet/notes that you have been taking. Email is in profile. Thanks!

will do

Updated my profile with my email address. Thanks!

Your email is not in your profile. YC has your email but they don’t share it. Your profile is currently.

> Founder WorkRamp (YS S16). www.workramp.com

I don’t really understand this, doesn’t YC strongly encourage investors, to the point of punishing those who violate, to wait until Demo Day? That way they get to build good market conditions for raising.

>> doesn’t YC strongly encourage investors, to the point of punishing those who violate, to wait until Demo Day? That way they get to build good market conditions for raising.

I’m not sure what’s your source because the first paragraph contradicts what you are saying “Over the last few days, a large number of investors have accelerated their outreach to our current batch of founders. They are moving quickly to make investment decisions, and we’re going to match their pace and accelerate our schedule by one week. YC W20 online Demo Day will now be on March 16.”

It's discouraged but people do it anyway. It's in YC's interest to help all the startups in the batch; presumably they decided this was the best way.

(I have no inside info; in fact I just found out about this from the HN submission.)

Thanks

They do in theory but there are countless excel spreadsheets in circulation with a full list of companies way in advance of demo day. If you're not plugged in and arrive at demo day, many VCs have reached out to companies way before you see them present.

YC does encourage both investors and founders to wait until Demo Day, but not to the point that they actively punish violators. There are many on both sides who break ranks and do it anyway.

Is there any way to participate as investor? I did not immediately find a way to sign up for it but would be very interested.

You need to apply to attend. The application has already passed for this batch (https://apply.ycombinator.com/events/246), but you can check back later to apply for the next one.

ty for the pointer!

Why are they giving us details like sorting options on the website, it’s not going to be open to the public is it?

This post is for the VCs and investors, but since YC is very transparent, they make the post public.

Should continue to do online demo day in conjunction with live ones. Would be a great way to scale the platform

YC's Demo Day attendee portal has had an online component at least since Winter 2018--the first I attended. The pitch videos were made available a few minutes delayed from real-time live.

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