<story><title>The YC VC Program</title><url>http://ycombinator.com/ycvc.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pg</author><text>The office hours help all the startups. Decreasing the amount invested helps the successful and borderline startups because it means less of our time is taken up mediating founder disputes in the ones that are exploding.  And yes, that was a significant time suck; Jessica says the majority of her time last batch was spent dealing with founder breakups.</text></item><item><author>waterlesscloud</author><text>I get why it&apos;s great for investors, but why is it great for founders?  Especially when they could use the time to change plans.</text></item><item><author>jedberg</author><text>This is great!  I always thought the $150k was too much of a runway.  It allowed the poor startups to limp along for too long.&lt;p&gt;And besides, the real value from these investments isn&apos;t the money, it is the mindshare you get with the VCs.  This will help make that mindshare greater.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>0ren</author><text>Have these disputes changed YC views regarding single founders?[0]
I think YC has always favored founding teams with a dominant leader[1], but I wonder if these break-up experiences have pushed it a bit further towards single founders with strong teams.&lt;p&gt;I guess there is no change, since the advantage YC sees in multi founders is probably only for the time interval before these disputes, at which point they are already doomed. But what I may be missing: could amicable breakup ever help a company avoid the dead pool?&lt;p&gt;Another thing I find missing from the discussion: is this move also meant to push new founders to profitability faster? PG seems to be mentioning it more lately ([2], [3] etc.).&lt;p&gt;[0] Honest question- I hope it does not spark another single vs. multi founder debate.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JK3sVFs6_rs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JK3sVFs6_rs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;i&gt;The best solution is not to need money.&lt;/i&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4067297&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4067297&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;i&gt;The best thing to measure the growth rate of is revenue.&lt;/i&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>The YC VC Program</title><url>http://ycombinator.com/ycvc.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pg</author><text>The office hours help all the startups. Decreasing the amount invested helps the successful and borderline startups because it means less of our time is taken up mediating founder disputes in the ones that are exploding.  And yes, that was a significant time suck; Jessica says the majority of her time last batch was spent dealing with founder breakups.</text></item><item><author>waterlesscloud</author><text>I get why it&apos;s great for investors, but why is it great for founders?  Especially when they could use the time to change plans.</text></item><item><author>jedberg</author><text>This is great!  I always thought the $150k was too much of a runway.  It allowed the poor startups to limp along for too long.&lt;p&gt;And besides, the real value from these investments isn&apos;t the money, it is the mindshare you get with the VCs.  This will help make that mindshare greater.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sjtgraham</author><text>PG how much of this attributable to $150k being too much money? Wasn&apos;t the last batch the largest by significant margin? Is it not expected that there will be more failure and therefore more demand on partner time as batch size increases?&lt;p&gt;In another comment, you mention founders scrapping over the carcass of their failed startups; what is it exactly they&apos;re fighting over? Surely the money has run out and anything left should be returned to investors in good faith? Are they fighting over Cinema Displays, Aeron chairs, etc, and by reducing the amount of the note you&apos;re reducing the amount of accoutrements these fledgling startups accumulate, and thus can fight over in the event of failure?</text></comment>