Despite posting on HN a lot I don't know much about how YC works. You seem to be implying that reaching investors before demo day is "cheating" somehow, and that it's not in the spirit of YC to do it. What benefit is there to your startup in trying to keep things balanced? Obviously you don't want to sabotage other startups in your cohort, but I can't figure out why talking to investors as early as you can would be seen as doing that.
The advice we get from Y Combinator (which I think is extremely valid) is to focus on our product and customers, because that's ultimately what investors are going to look at. Fundraising is distracting, emotionally draining, and unproductive if you don't have those. If you're spending half your time during the program fundraising, that's half the time not spent on more important tasks
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Despite posting on HN a lot I don't know much about how YC works. You seem to be implying that reaching investors before demo day is "cheating" somehow, and that it's not in the spirit of YC to do it. What benefit is there to your startup in trying to keep things balanced? Obviously you don't want to sabotage other startups in your cohort, but I can't figure out why talking to investors as early as you can would be seen as doing that.
The advice we get from Y Combinator (which I think is extremely valid) is to focus on our product and customers, because that's ultimately what investors are going to look at. Fundraising is distracting, emotionally draining, and unproductive if you don't have those. If you're spending half your time during the program fundraising, that's half the time not spent on more important tasks
That makes sense. Cheers.