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You still really think he did all of that only because of YC's ~6% stake in them?

I'm not trying to take anything away from pg here, but "all of that" refers in this case to 7 emails with one VC.

AirBnB has raised $7.8M (at, what, around a ~$40M valuation at the time? 6% of which would be over $2m). Is it really that incredible that someone would send a few emails for a shot at that kind of money?

He's risking his reputation if he's pushing a company that he's not confident in. The reputation is worth a lot too, probably mostly in reciprocal connections.

That's true, but he's also risking his reputation (and his paycheck) if he doesn't shop around for later stage investors for his companies. This kind of thing is his job, it's what Y Combinator exists to do. When one of his companies looks like it's going to be successful, he has to do this kind of stuff to actually get a return out of it.

Which, again, isn't to denigrate him at all. He's obviously very good at what he does and deserves a lot of respect for it.

6% is a large stake for an angel, and even bigger for a seed investor.

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