[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.