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by jeanlaf 1909 days ago
Actually, Airbyte is a pivot from a first product. And we struggled a lot to raise with the previous product, even though we were fresh out of YC. YC is an indicator but not enough by itself.
3 comments

Yes, but you did raise. Now ask yourself if you would have raised this round without YC backing and the same product.

Time will tell if you will succeed, best of luck to you and your team.

But keep in mind that raising money is not success in itself.

Raising money is not a success indicator at all. We agree. Having your first paying customer is typically a much more important one :).
One of my best investments is a company I turned down at demo day, but who pivoted a year later after running out of funds and finding a completely new product. I gave them their first post pivot angel check and they're well on their way to unicorn status now.

Big fan of looking at what YC founders do 1 year out of the program. YC backs companies in large part on founder quality even if the original idea isn't a winner, and I've made quite a few strong bets on YC founders when they needed a reset a bit later. (The good ones keep the original company cap table intact to take care of their pre-reset investors. That's a huge positive signal for me coming in as fresh blood.)

This is very smart.
Out of curiosity, what was the first product?