2) Herd Mentality: There is subtle signaling if a company being presented right beside you already has 50% of their round closed, vs a company that hasnt received this early interest.
These are not my ideals (I'm a fan of self-funding and sustainable growth), just the reality.
Have done demo day twice, and I can confirm. It was way, way worse the second time around. Lots of companies had filled out their rounds by demo day, despite the official YC advice (i.e. "don't fundraise until demo day").
Also, it's not a subtle effect at all, particularly now that demo day is split up into batches with similar companies grouped together. If you're presenting on the same day as some company close to your space that has raised millions, it looks bad. Investors routinely ask who else has invested in your company. If company X has a long list of name investors and you don't, investors want to put their money in company X. It's a downside of the dynamics of the feeding frenzy created by demo day -- investors have little to go on, so they make a big deal out of herd signaling.
Obviously, this doesn't matter for the hottest deals, but most companies in a batch aren't hot deals, and the hot deals don't need demo day in the first place.
Think on the margin. If there’s a particularly good batch of startups probably the amount invested will be greater than average but I doubt it will be exactly proportional to quality. In the long run the ecosystem would adjust to higher quality by attracting more funding. But a company only goes through Demo Day once and they’re all competing for the capital of VCs and angels, which capital is probably medium term flexible but isn’t in the short run.
But again what business is it of yours if someone else is faster out of the gate than you? This is like complaining that another company is better at marketing than you. I guess that's bad for you, but not their problem.
I guess the premise of his comment is that there is a finite amount of money to be invested across all YC participants each season and that “back room” deals prevent startups that are less connected from having the same opportunity. Demo day could be seen as a way for all startups to compete for that finite investment on equal terms.
That’s not to say that I agree with the premise that it’s a zero-sum game. At the same time I can see eager investors losing interest in hearing from other startups after securing investments in the hot startup earlier on. A lot of startup investing isn’t merit-based, it’s more about hype and gossip than you’d expect.
Capital is not unlimited. Many investors, particularly angels, only make x investments each demo day. If they reach x before you've even talked to them, that's bad.
Also - the first thing many investors asked us at demo day was "who else is investing?" - hard to answer this when you've specifically been instructed not to fundraise yet.
2) Herd Mentality: There is subtle signaling if a company being presented right beside you already has 50% of their round closed, vs a company that hasnt received this early interest.
These are not my ideals (I'm a fan of self-funding and sustainable growth), just the reality.