[mwseibel]

On one hand pre-money SAFEs diluting pre-money SAFEs is helpful to founders. On the other hand it makes it impossible to calculate dilution. As a result, a large number of companies are raising money without understanding their ownership. Once they get to Series A they get a rude awakening when they end up owning less than 50% of their company. By moving to post-money SAFEs every founder will have a clear understanding of their cap table which will allow them to better plan for future funding rounds. The negative effect that you describe can easily be accounted for by slightly increasing the cap at which you raise the SAFE. Needless to say, we are both trying to accomplish the same goal: founders raising money at financial terms that won't result in over-dilution.

[sethbannon]

Generally a huge fan of the way you're simplifying things here, just pointing out that this change makes YC more expensive for founders from an equity standpoint.

It's true that founders could compensate for this by raising SAFEs from other investors at a higher valuation, but that is likely to make those raises a little more difficult, so there is some downside.

[neom]

This will almost certainly make it harder for founders to raise money, but we found it wasn't that difficult to explain that time has passed so things need to change a little in the cap as we roll forward.