[carfacts]

I’m a founder that went through Techstars, not YC so maybe not exactly similar but accelerators want you to wait to Demo Day to have any investor talks while VCs want to get in early. Much like experienced used goods resellers will attempt to pick through yard sales early - no competition leads to investor friendlier terms. So an investor telling YC candidates not to wait to have these conversations isn’t exactly news. (Question whether waiting makes sense, but these are the dynamics.)

[tptacek]

It's not binary. My impression is that most YC companies aren't raising priced rounds at/around Demo Day; these are syndicated seed rounds. They mostly don't have "lead investors". They can happen incrementally over the course of a month.

I'm sure there are companies that have all their round capacity snapped up by single firms, but I don't think that's the norm; I think a bunch of random angels is much closer to the norm.

Which suggests that the "yard sale" phenomenon you're talking about here is mostly not a real thing.