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Comment by mikeleeorg | Hacker News Reader

I think it might be interesting to see some stats on Prototype Day. Or, at least, what factors contributed to high votes and whether or not those votes had any correlation to the Demo Day and performance of the company beyond YC.

What I'm trying to get at is - YC obviously sees some kind of value in Prototype Day, so what is the value and can others replicate that value in some other way?

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Prototype Day is a chance to practice your pitch in front of your peers. For most people, it's also the first chance to see what impacts an audience, especially after they've just sat through 20 presentations. (This is helpful both for pitching investors in general, and for demo day specifically.)

You can replicate a lot of the value by getting a group of serious founders together and having them spend a day or half a day pitching to each other, with feedback. If you can get a mentor experienced with the process to give you feedback, even better.

That makes sense to me. What did Zachary mean when he wrote, "The partners tell you not to prepare"? I understood that to mean you don't have to have a pitch ready for Prototype Day yet.

It was also an opportunity to actually see what everyone is working on. At that point in our batch, we had yet to really meet everyone and understand what they were working on. You get to know those you socialize with early on, or those in your group office hours....

When I went through YC ages ago, pretty sure Dropbox got the most votes. They may be the most valued YC company atm.

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