[brudgers]

My recollection is that $125k came about because when there was more money (and there was at one time) it was enough to tempt a non-trivial number of founders to fight over rather than build a company.

The problem, in so far as what I read on HN, was not three cofounders deciding to take the money and travel the world instead of building the company. The problem was that the founders who were interested in fighting over the money were distributed across many teams.

As for the realism of six months of expenses from $125k, thinking about it those terms is a signal that someone might not be a good fit. If it's a problem, it's a surmountable problem either through work (and luck) or through a willingness to fail.

It's a non-starter for non-startups.

[nomoreplease]

> because when there was more money (and there was at one time) it was enough to tempt a non-trivia

My recollection is the opposite. I picked a random web archive day 12+ years ago and confirmed it was a laughably small sum:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090302183945/http://ycombinato...

> We usually invest $5000 + $5000n, where n is the number of participating founders (i.e. 2 founders get $15,000, 3 get $20,000), in return for between 2% and 10% of the company. The median is 6%.

[brudgers]

Originally it was that low. Then it went up until it hit the point of creating problems. Now it is where it is which is lower than where it once was but much higher than it was before the peak.

The increases started I believe via an outside investor (maybe Conway? maybe Arrington? maybe not) agreeing to spread dollars uniformly across each batch's portfolio. There were also things like AWS credits. Basically, there were miscellaneous efforts to extend the runway.

As YC has matured, the efforts have become more organized.

It's worth noting that the lower investments originally were more commensurate with both the cost of living for a few months in the Bay Area and with the valuations of startups...Reddit sold to Conde Nast for about $10 million and sub-million dollar funding rounds used to be news on the front page of Hacker News.