I don't compare myself with others much. Why should I care if there are earlier-stage startups in there?
We always think that our current stage is pretty high up the mountain already (see a rough July 2022 ARR update[0] when I thought I was on top of the world) but if you zoom out, you see things with much better perspective (18 months later, the whole year of 2022 looks way less impressive[1])
If we're on the road to $100MM+ in ARR, the current spot we're at will be flattened to almost zero when you look back with perspective a few years down the line.
So there's that.
And then, "why join YC", well the answer is simple.
- We are growing, but we could grow so much faster. Everything is still on a shoestring budget.
- We have an epic roadmap and could grow the product to mind-boggling levels of awesome. YC could help us shave years off of that.
- Plus we finally cracked breakeven acquisition on cold traffic but we're strapped for cash.
- And finally, I've joined several founder "communities" in the last few months (online and local) and those are all just a dump-your-promo Slack channel with zero added value or interaction. The local "startup" events are full of startup consultants on the hunt, designers, would-be employees and the like (but zero founders). So it feels a bit lonely when you've got a challenge which is clearly in the "thousands of founders must have solved this exact same problem before, so why should I bang my head on the wall" category.
So: advice, founder-friendly terms, a network of peers, and not having to chase investors for capital. That's why I applied.
Thanks for answering. I misread your orig post. When you said you had 109k last month I thought that was monthly rev, which would make your arr 1.3mm. The standard offer 500k for 7% is pretty bad (5x rev multiple with x00% growth)
Overall the money isn’t a lot. It sounds like you’re strapped for cash. If you optimize for that you’ll likely find much better terms. The point about cohort being so many idea stage is that they focus on that and have resources geared towards those people. And the community (cohort) will be much less mature business wise. They give you the golden touch which helps for cos selling vapor ware. I think you’re beyond that and can go more traditional route to raise money. Did you reach out to other vcs?
> In a typical scenario where you raise your next safes at a $15M post-money valuation cap, the $375,000 MFN safe would convert into $375,000 / $15,000,000 = 2.5% of the company.
Maybe, I misunderstood then! I thought they were referring to next funding round to hand over rest of $375k. But in fact, it was just the calculation to explain the valuation of the company in ref to that balance.
We always think that our current stage is pretty high up the mountain already (see a rough July 2022 ARR update[0] when I thought I was on top of the world) but if you zoom out, you see things with much better perspective (18 months later, the whole year of 2022 looks way less impressive[1])
If we're on the road to $100MM+ in ARR, the current spot we're at will be flattened to almost zero when you look back with perspective a few years down the line.
So there's that.
And then, "why join YC", well the answer is simple.
- We are growing, but we could grow so much faster. Everything is still on a shoestring budget.
- We have an epic roadmap and could grow the product to mind-boggling levels of awesome. YC could help us shave years off of that.
- Plus we finally cracked breakeven acquisition on cold traffic but we're strapped for cash.
- And finally, I've joined several founder "communities" in the last few months (online and local) and those are all just a dump-your-promo Slack channel with zero added value or interaction. The local "startup" events are full of startup consultants on the hunt, designers, would-be employees and the like (but zero founders). So it feels a bit lonely when you've got a challenge which is clearly in the "thousands of founders must have solved this exact same problem before, so why should I bang my head on the wall" category.
So: advice, founder-friendly terms, a network of peers, and not having to chase investors for capital. That's why I applied.
[0]: https://nuro.video/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Capture-de%CC%...
[1]: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSEOGmySAAyv...