[lpolovets]

As an investor, I think this will accomplish a few things:

1) A lot of scheduling friction will disappear. The week just after demo day is usually crazy because hundreds of founders and investors are all trying to schedule meetings with each other, and there are inevitable race conditions that lead to a lot of rescheduling and wasted time. (E.g. I email three founders with 5 possible time slots, and they all reply and ask for the same time slot.)

2) I think this will be great for investors who act quickly and go by their gut. There are plenty of investors out there -- especially those who write smaller checks -- for whom 20 minutes will be enough time to make a quick decision.

3) I'm not sure if this will be great for investors like me that approach investing more methodically rather than with their gut.* I love 1-hour meetings because that's plenty of time for both sides to dig in and learn a lot about each other. Twenty minutes feels very short to me, and I'm not sure if a 20-minute meeting is more likely to save me and the founder from an unnecessary 1-hour meeting, or if I end up having just as many 1-hour meeting -- but now with an extra 20 minutes tacked on.

That said, I don't want to judge this process before I try it at least once, and I'm looking forward to trying it out in August.

* FWIW, there are great gut-based investors and great methodical investors, and I'm not implying either approach is better.

[zillionize]

I am an investor and my experience is, if you have done enough homework about the startup you want to meet, twenty minutes shall be long enough to clarify a few key things so you can make an informed decision.

[lpolovets]

I personally like asking a lot of questions, so I'd still prefer >20 minutes. I 100% agree with you though that preparation can save a lot of meeting time. One catch with YC companies in my experience is that they rarely have detailed pitch decks or significant web presences, so there's often not that much to research before a meeting.

[zillionize]

Did you check out The Macro - http://themacro.com/ ? Yes the info disclosed by YC for each startup is still limited but better than nothing in the before.

[lpolovets]

Definitely helpful, but AFAIK only about a dozen startups from the 100+ startup batch have been covered so far (https://www.google.com/#q=%22meet+the+batch+s16%22+inurl:the...). I can imagine the coverage will double or triple by demo day, but I'm skeptical that all startups will be covered. Btw, I love the /data subsection of your website!

[snowmaker]

How long would you want?

[lpolovets]

I typically do 1-hour meetings and that works pretty well. 45 min would be okay. I haven't tried 20 min before, but that feels a little short. To apply the over-applied analogy that fundraising is like dating, 20 minutes would be enough time to tell if a date is terrible, but I'm not sure if it's enough time to distinguish between a B date and an A date.

Two ideas related to Investor Day that I'd be interested in:

- let investors ask for one or two consecutive 20-minute slots. Founders can just allocate one slot to someone asking for two, but asking for two slots would be a good signal of investor interest and/or investing style.

- don't automate scheduling, but instead host all founders at a single location for a few days, and make it easy for investors to book slots on founders' calendars once those founders opt-in to meeting up. Maybe this could use something like https://calendly.com/

[zacharycohn]

Love the "open to experiments!" attitude. I think you nailed it here - 20 minutes is enough to rule someone out.

If our original scenario is:

Scenario 0: 25 1-hour meetings over the course of a few days. Investments = 25-n

You seemed to be suggesting in an earlier comment you might end up with:

Scenario 1: 25 20-minute meetings followed by 25 1-hour meetings. Investments = 25-n

I think you'll actually end up with:

Scenario 2: 25 20-minute meetings, eliminate x companies, (25-x) 1-hour meetings. Investments = (25-x)-n.

Saves you and the founders some unnecessary hour long meetings.

[lpolovets]

Roughly speaking, our investing process is: 1 hour one-on-one meeting, then 1 hour full partner meeting, then decision.

The way I think about the math: Current scenario: 25 1-hour one-on-one meetings -> 10 full-partner meetings -> 2-3 investments.

Worst case for Investor day: 25 20-minute meetings -> still don't have enough info -> 25 1-hour one-on-one meetings -> 10 full partner meetings -> 2-3 investments.

Good case for Investor day: 25 20-minute meetings -> 10 companies don't seem like a fit -> 15 1-hour one-on-one meetings -> 10 full partner meetings -> 2-3 investments.

Best case for Investor day: 25 20-minute meetings -> I get all the info I need -> 10 full partner meetings -> 2-3 investments.

These four cases represent 25, ~33, ~23, and ~8 hours of one-on-one meeting time, respectively.

[jforman]

This is probably sufficient for many angel investors, a few seed investors, and very few series A investors. No matter how much homework you've done on a company you can't responsibly deploy $5M after 20 minutes of diligence on the team.

[etjossem]

Since this is YC, "many angel investors, a few seed investors, and very few series A investors" are the target audience.

[iandanforth]

Out of curiosity what constitutes that homework for you and do you feel like you can complete that homework prior to demo day?

[zillionize]

>>what constitutes that homework for you

This is the homework we do:

https://www.zillionize.com/data/

>>do you feel like you can complete that homework prior to demo day

Yes the time is very tight so we have built an app to automate that.

[timdorr]

I think you'll still be able to be methodical afterwards via direct communication over emails/calls to the startups, just as you used to before. Unless this Tinder-style app removes all the contact info you'd normally receive, you should be able to take it slow if you want.

[lpolovets]

I agree that I can still be methodical after Investor Day. I'm just saying that before, if I was interested in 25 companies after demo day, then I'd do 25 1-hour meetings spread over a few days. With Investor Day -- and without a chance to do much prep/research before each short meeting -- I'm not sure if I'm going to have 25 20-minute meetings and then still have 25 1-hour meetings to follow up, or if it's more like 25 20-minute meetings and then 5-10 1-hour meetings.

[tyre]

In what percentage of 1-hour meetings do you eliminate the company within the first 20 minutes?

As a CEO, I've eliminated at least 25% investors in that time period. Given that most meetings start with the company pitch, my guess is 20 minutes would be enough to winnow down the list of hour meetings.

[lpolovets]

It's hard to say. If it's literally my first exposure to a company, then probably 80% or 90%. But demo days are more complex. I might see 125 companies pitch on stage and try to follow up with 25 of them. So that's 80% eliminated from the demos. For the other 25 companies, I already know a little bit from their pitch and find them interesting, so I'm not sure how many of them I'd be able to eliminate within 20 minutes. My guess is 25%-50% (of the remaining 25), but it's a wild guess.

[afarrell]

> there are inevitable race conditions

I've found https://calendly.com/ super useful for eliminating race conditions in scheduling, especially across time zones.

[josh_carterPDX]

20 minutes is a good amount of time to determine if you like the Founders or not, but I agree that you probably want to do more digging. Would love to see YC post a "post mortem" about how all of this went.