| I think you're drawing a false dichotomy here. As a founder of a YC company, I can tell you there's no signal from YC that "a small exit is equal to failure". From personal experience, I can tell you that YC holds the wellbeing of the founders it funds as a top priority, even if it might seem to be against YC's own short-term interests. It's true that YC's economic model is to fund companies that can be $10B+ successes, because having a few companies that make it into that league enables them to fund all the other companies that don't make it that big. But they're still happy for founders who don't achieve "unicorn" status but make an exit that yields them a life-changing amount of money, or indeed any outcome that leaves them better off than they were before. Still, they'll encourage all their founders to try to build a breakout company, because by doing that, even a "small" exit will often be much bigger than the exit you'd make if you started out with deliberately modest ambitions. |