"But YC takes 7% of my company " – Our experience of YC W24
blacksmith.sh> "By the end of the second week, we had our first lead investment offer"
My concern with YC is that it doesn’t give you time to build relationships and determine who is actually a good investor to work with. How do YC startups go about this? Since you're giving up a board seat, you're stuck with them for a long time. This whole two-week timeline feels very rushed.
The other side of this spectrum is that the founders spend months of their time fundraising rather than actually building the company.
> The moment we let firms know that we had a lead investment offer, our conversion rate with them went from near-zero to over 80%.
This is mind blowing and not surprising at the same time.
Not at all - anyone who has ever tried raising money from VCs knows that they are extremely risk averse and always looking for someone else to lead the round. It doesn’t even matter what you’re building as long as other people are investing.