Seeing this for a few weeks now. Noticed it when PG tweeted about how there are 100 ai startups in the batch and all are legit. That is none of then it’s phony or opportunistic. He also talked about how domain experts are building in AI and great founders.
Then saw Garry Tan promoting the batch and retweeting others doing it. A couple of other partners talked about the companies they are excited about too.
To me, this signals that yc isn’t getting the kind of interest they used to get and they have to promote the quality of the batch to be able to generate enough interest. For the first time in 10-15 years maybe. If they have to do it to ensure the companies are getting enough funding interest, what about startups without a brand name behind them.
We will see more of these as we get close to the demo day. Most startups are just ai wrappers or agents. Not sure about the exact differentiation between them. Not clear from the descriptions or websites.
YC does that frequently. Like they always, ALWAYS talk about Airbnb as an example or inspiration.
https://futurism.com/ai-dot-com-bubble A good read about AI startups. Although we don't know what the YC23 batch AI startups are upto....
They do it for already established startups. Not the newest batch that is up for demo day or funding. Promoting stripe or airbnb is different than promoting a relatively unfunded and unheralded startup in s23 batch.
Garry recently got into his role, maybe its his way of being proactive
Btw Garry's way more active on twitter on sf politics too, YC brand is everpresent uf jot more, I wouldn't read too much into what they retweet or promote
Asking this on behalf of many founders like myself, wanted to collate across multiple inputs: what is it that VCs really want to hear/see from a startup?
Would love to get inputs from VCs and other founders alike - basis your experie...
I was speaking to an ex-colleague and he mentioned how my previous employer, a lending startup, has been intentionally over-reporting disbursal numbers and under-reporting delinquencies in portfolio.
They conveniently chuck the NBFC par...
What problems would Indian and Global startups be solving in the next decade, or they would be just throwing random yearly new buzz words and as usual VCs would be having orgasms on these buzz words.
I mean real problems.
Things like this make startups sound like a ponzi scheme
