| I had a convo with an angel who was asking me (for some reason) for advice on breaking into the YC investor network. The most surprising thing is that angels appear to be semi-excluded now. I don’t have anything more than two datapoints: 1. That angel who reached out to me 2. The fact that the YC investor demo day application explicitly excludes angels. Of course, #2 is misleading. You can certainly submit an app as an angel. You just can’t fill out >5 of the fields, because they begin with “If you represent an investment firm…” The takeaway for me was, ironically, there may be an opportunity for angels to band together and take some risks. YC is all about risk analysis. If they don’t want to risk it on a 58yo solo founder with satellites in orbit, perhaps others will. But you’re right about YC one-itis. Right now it’s hard to see any alternatives. They do exist, though. EDIT: By the way, a word to OP: don’t take rejection so hard. (http://www.paulgraham.com/judgement.html helps with this.) One of the key features of YC is that they invest in people who look like a good bet. As I was reading though your post, I couldn’t help but think that pivoting a few times may not be a good bet. It’s true that startups do pivot, but not having a clear idea of who your customers are is also a warning sign. As someone else said, put some contact info in your profile. You’ll get dozens of people reaching out to you from this thread if you hurry. Of course, you could be right about the discrimination aspect, which is different. In that case, rejection would be personal. |
That might be a consequence from that Dreamworld debacle... Maybe... Hopefully...
Having an obvious scam legitimizing themselves through YCombinator was at the very least very disconcerting.
(Just a random person's opinion)
https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/dreamworld