[jondubois]

It doesn't happen enough. Nowhere near enough. The number of companies which apply to YC versus the number which are actually accepted is a very bad ratio. YC and all other incubators combined do not represent a free market by any stretch of the imagination. They're picking winners based on some selection criteria which worked at one point in history... This funnel has been so thoroughly gamed and hacked that at this stage, they might as well invest in random companies. Does anyone realize just how hard it is to get even $20k in funding for a hard working honest founder who is not a psychopathic manipulator. IMO, anybody who can't setup a functional profitable business with $20k funding is unfit to run any company. You've got to give a first chance to more people and fewer second, third and fourth chances to charming psychos.

[objclxt]

> Does anyone realize just how hard it is to get even $20k in funding for a hard working honest founder who is not a psychopathic manipulator

It isn't that hard to get $20k in funding if your idea is halfway decent - that's not the value that YC provides. The value that YC provides is in the networking and connections, which I think a lot of people would argue is worth far more than the money.

> anybody who can't setup a functional profitable business with $20k funding is unfit to run any company

Not quite. Good luck setting up a profitable hardware business with $20k of funding, tooling costs alone are going to dwarf your seed capital.

[jondubois]

>> It isn't that hard to get $20k in funding if your idea is halfway decent - that's not the value that YC provides. The value that YC provides is in the networking and connections

It's very hard in most countries - Coming from someone who has been applying constantly for 10 years. At one point I even managed to get invited to some events and conferences where a specific seed stage investor was going and I approached him enough times at different events that I was eventually able to secure coffee with the guy; took 2 years from when I started trying to get investment. Then this investor encouraged me to apply to their incubator... Then they just rejected me. My open source project was one of the most popular in Australia at the time. I had worked on it for several years and I had a solid business strategy and I could really have benefited from $20K and any kind of support network (I was never asking for YC level business connections, just some help me get 1 foot in the door with 1 B2B customer would have been great).

BTW my project was more than 'halfway decent'. As proof, today my project powers multiple mainstream tech projects and several major blockchain projects and I'm collecting forging rewards on one of them. Did it with $0 funding and most people I met actively working against me instead of helping me. Got screwed over so many times.

I don't think my case is unusual. What happened to me is just average.

The thing is that in spite of it being so difficult to secure a mere $20K, this whole experience did not make me believe that fiat money is valuable. It did the exact opposite. So now I'm dedicating my career to the fight against fiat money.

[gridlockd]

Venture Capital isn't a small business loan, it's a moonshot.

> IMO, anybody who can't setup a functional profitable business with $20k funding is unfit to run any company.

Your business is either unproven, then it has a high risk of failure no matter how good you are at running companies, or it's proven, then everybody is already doing it and it's not going to be very profitable.

[valuearb]

You don’t need a VC for $20k, all you need is a credit card.