- Y-Combinator says that startups preparing to raise their first round of funding from venture capital firms are at a fundamental disadvantage because of a lack of information about the process.
- The accelerator published a 70-page 'how-to' Series A guide for startup founders, based off the insights it's gleaned from helping 190 startups through their own Series A financing rounds.
- Business Insider spoke with YC partner Aaron Harris to find out more about the biggest takeaways from the guide, the most common mistakes that startup founders typically make, and why the accelerator is seems to be giving away a competitive edge.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Famed startup accelerator Y-Combinator is pushing forward on its effort to level the playing field for startup founders seeking Series A funding, with a sweeping 70-page 'how-to' guide published this week.
For the past two years, Y-Combinator has been gathering data on the Series A rounds that its companies have embarked upon. Based off the insights it gleaned from the 190 completed Series A rounds, or $2 billion in capital raised, the company has slowly been publishing information, like what a standard term sheet should look like and how founders can leverage the fundraising process in their favor.
The new How To guide is all-encompassing, covering everything from telling startup founders how to judge their preparedness, how to draft their stories, prepare their investment materials, and meet with investors. That's because there's no one problem that founders entering the Series A fundraising process face, YC partner Aaron Harris told Business Insider.
"There are founders who have the right underlying metrics but don't know who to talk to, and founders who have the right story but can't figure out how to tell it with numbers," Harris said.
A common mistake for founders: achieving balance
One of the most common mistakes that founders make, according to Harris, is to either entirely place their focus on building the company or on fundraising, rather than the entire process.
"They get this advice that says you're either building your company or you're fundraising and when you're building your company, never talk to investors. When you're talking to investors, you know, forget the company essentially in your fundraising," Harris said. The reality is far more nuanced, he explained, as founders need to build relationships with investors without sacrificing their company's own performance.
"What you have to do is move through a set of investors in short time periods or like little meetings here and there to gauge their interests," Harris explained.
Founders who are best at raising understand the importance of slowly developing a relationship with investors, Harris said. And they understand the sensitivity of that relationship, he added.
"There's no such thing as a completely friendly coffee or completely friendly meeting between an investor and a founder," Harris said. "The investor's always evaluating the founder and knowing that, and thinking about how that works, is critical," he added.
Giving up YC's competitive edge
The guide is aimed at addressing the misconceptions that surround the startup process, many of which Harris said had arisen thanks to the "completely false" guidance on metrics that many investors have given before.
Funding was "happening with companies with $200,000 in annual revenue and companies that had $9 million and all the way in between. And so founders who were trying to gate themselves very specifically around hitting specific metrics, had set timelines, were doing themselves a disservice," Harris said.
And even though Y-Combinator startups currently had an edge in the Series A financing process, Harris noted that letting go of that competitive advantage was important for the company's mission to help all startups, not just the ones admitted into its accelerator.
"There seems to be a lot of surprise that we would release all this information when clearly having this information is an advantage for our startups as they fundraise. But YC has this foundational idea that we are just trying to help founders wherever they are," Harris said. "This is another step in that direction."
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