[wiwillia]

Hi Nawitus. I completely understand that line of thinking, and it should have been especially true for us given that we'd been running for about 1 year and had $1m in sales at the point where we joined YC.

What I can tell you is that we thought about in the same way as bringing on a co-founder or superstar employee. The value of YC isn't measured in their investment, but rather the value they bring.

Even in terms of the boost to our valuation alone from the validation, beyond everything else, YC more than paid for itself. If you look at our growth graph there's also a sharp inflection that starts shortly after we joined the program. That could be unrelated, but it's my strong belief that it was the value of the program that helped us accelerate.

[nawitus]

Everyone seems to compare "doing YC" to "not doing YC", which is a false comparison. YC can easily be better than not doing anything, but that doesn't mean it's even close to the best alternative. You could've sold 4% of equity for x million $ and used that to grow your business, for example.

[wiwillia]

I see what you're trying to say, but money is often not the issue - it's the connections and expertise that are so valuable. In my humble, and admittedly limited, opinion the network and community and shared experience/expertise that YC brought far outweighed any million dollar investment we could have taken (and no investor would have even considered giving us millions).

We ended up raising millions (about $22M in the last year), and I don't know if it would have been possible without YC. All our investors and intros came through the network we built while in the program.

Hope that makes sense, of course this is all my opinion and you can evaluate and come to your own conclusion - I just wanted to share my experience and perspective!

[swampthing]

You can still sell equity for cash as a YC company - many do, in fact!

As an aside, I think your numbers are a bit unrealistic. Even if you were to sell 4% for $1m, that's a $25m valuation. That's definitely higher than what most YC companies are worth prior to entering YC (and even right afterwards).

[ScottBurson]

> we'd been running for about 1 year and had $1m in sales at the point where we joined YC

Did that affect the valuation at which YC invested?