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Comment by josh2600 | Hacker News Reader

Why don't they just do A-rounds for YC companies? Wouldn't that be the most obvious, and potentially profitable, play?

$39M sounds very low for a fund that wants to do A-rounds. They'd be out of money after about 5 companies.

While the term "A-round" has a changing meaning that has been especially fluid over the last couple years, two responses to your point: first, 4MM is (as an example) a perfectly respectable A round, and 39MM would buy 8-9 of those --- which is also a perfectly respectable number of companies for a small fund portfolio; second, full-on "institutional" lettered rounds are often syndicated, and usually want primarily for a fund to lead the round, so perhaps their play is to lead a bunch of syndicated rounds to help catalyze funding for companies.

For every investment made most firms hold at least 2x that amount in reserves for future rounds.

8-9 companies would turn it into a highly speculative fund, given the expected distribution of returns for typical startups. I would expect a 39M fund to invest in "seed stage" companies, in chunks of 100k to 1M tops. I'd expect them to aim to have between 50 and 100 investments when the fund is fully deployed.

Yep, this makes sense. Still, it's enough cash for them to be involved in or even lead syndicated rounds. Either way: seems like a fun thing to be a part of.

an amazing convergence of talent to say the least

You reserve capital when you do an A to keep your pro rata, so a $3mm A usually needs 6 or so committed.

firms commit about half their capital to the first investment, and about half to follow-on financing of the winners.

Uncle. UNCLE! I was wrong!

I believe PG has said that YC won't do follow-on rounds for YC companies due to the signaling effect that would have for outside investors. Then again, I know some YC partners invest in YC companies independently, so it seems like something of a grey area.

Correct; YC doesn't do any follow-on investing.

But all of the YC partners individually invest in follow-on rounds. (as individuals) I'm fairly sure that this is much more lucrative than what they make from YC funds.

This is definitely my thought. This must be for a Series A fund - given that is where the glut is, per PG.

But not sure that $39M will be sufficient.

Although, the more I think about it...."Initialize Capital" is an clever name for a seed stage tech fund.

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