yc

Attention over time

7-day rolling share of analyzed posts/comments mentioning this entity · 90 daily points ending 2026-10-14

Final complete day: 2026-10-14. Attention was 0.6% — this entity appeared in 5 of 883 analyzed posts/comments in the seven days ending that day (8 mentions).

Each point is a seven-day rolling window of complete UTC days; a point is comparable only when at least 100 analyzed posts or comments fall inside it. A day with no analyzed records counts as zero; missing coverage is marked and never shown as zero. The series ends at the latest complete analyzed day — it never extends into the current incomplete day. How attention is measured.

Recent mentions

1. 2026-10-13 16:16 UTCPost

   [I will not promote] Initial Sole Director (co-founder can join later) widely accepted ? - So I have this dilemma. We are two co-founders. However, we want to make it the case that when I accepted to YC, only one stays on the board till the first institutional priced-equity or something like that, then the second founder joins. Is this an accepted practice, and common ? I checked this blog post "splitting-equity-among-founders" on YC, and it mentions by the end that a CEO only on the board initially before major funding is recommended. I am really interested to hear the different views on this.

2. 2026-10-13 11:29 UTCPost

   Tips for pitch competitions and meeting investors (I will not promote) - I was invited to an incubator to prepare founders for a live pitch competition later this month. The winner will receive a cheque (not huge) but also meet more investors by being invited to other networking opportunities. The competition is like a filtering process. After two weeks, I’d like to summarize what I observed and share some of the most common feedback I gave and heard. We had other founders and investors attend the practice sessions. Tip 1: show up to everything Not gonna lie. I’m kind of appalled at how casual some founders took this. One even got disqualified because he wanted to show up for the last session only out of 4 opportunities. We literally had the managing partner of a fund there along with multiple angel investors. The practices aren’t just practices. They’re mini networking events without all the noise and competition. You never know what might happen. I know multiple founders that have received offers before a pitch event (not at this one that I know of) and a demo day because they practiced in front of the right people. Two YC founders I advised had it happen to them. I’m even considering investing in these founders myself because I’ve spent more time and gotten to know them. Tip 2: less is more and show don’t tell Most slides were jam packed with 8pt font and investors said they were distracted. The slides everybody liked had one sentence and the founder said the bullets that would have been on it originally verbally. The managing partner said multiple times: the presentation slides I want to see live are different than the ones you send us to read by ourselves. Even better where the slides had one big image showing the concept that made people curious while the founder connected the dots and created an aha! Moment. But don’t use video (unless you want everyone to stop and watch it) because that was even more distracting. Here’s a power move I taught one team that went really well: I told them to bring props as proof. So they brought these big silver and copper bars that came from their recycling solution. They handed them out to the crowd first and they should do the same with the judges. Tip 3: don’t bash the competition A founder tried this and it bombed. It’s kind of like going on a date only to hear them trash their exes the whole time. Might be true but it’s not the time or place. You’d rather acknowledge what you’re learning from them and say you know something they don’t. Tip 4: ask for investment This also surprised me. I think some founders had imposter syndrome. The same way founders forget to ask for the close when doing founder led sales. And when an angel investor asked “are you raising?” They hesitated and didn’t have a clear answer. I interrupted them and told all the founders the answer should always be “we’re always raising and more than happy to talk.” It doesnt mean you have to take money in the current round. But you’d rather have and not need than need and not have. While we’re here, I like to share how much we’ve raised so far and even have committed, unless there’s a good reason not to. It creates FOMO especially at a pitch competition. Tip 5: create the vibes One angel said to the founders, “I invest based on the team and vibes.” He explained that domain expertise is important but the founders enthusiasm and energy separate the top founders. You don’t have to be a master TED Talk presenter. But at least show the passion and swagger that you’re the team that wins. Tip 6: tell customer stories If you’ve heard of the heroes journey then you know that you’re not the hero. The customer is. You’re the guide that solves the customer problem and if you tell that story, investors love it. One founder started with a customer with a problem and by the end showed how the problem was a real customer and how their life changed. Angels in the audience were like, “where do I sign?” I expect this founder to win the competition. I could think of a bunch more but these were the most common while not repeating the same old advice. The moral of the story is don’t sleep on pitch competitions. If anything they’re good practice. Hope this helps and if you’re pitching investors, wishing you the best. Go get ‘em.

3. 2026-10-12 07:25 UTCComment

   I'm not following. I'm guessing you eventually want the dual-class so the founders have more control as your ownership dilutes from having more people on your cap table, but you're worried these clauses would hinder your YC investor/demo day/seed round. I'd use an investor-friendly generic incorporation to take the YC initial funding (you're not prevented from setting up more companies and building more products/traction in the new companies existing investors have no part of). At demo day you'll probably still not have meaningful traction so it speeds things up to take on new investor using the original vehicle. It's sort of around (before/after) the institutional Seed round say 1 year in where you make the switch. Before/after depending on the reputation of the fund. Essentially what you're doing is let the VC DD the key client contracts signed between clients and Apple Labs -> VC invest into Apple Labs. Come renewal, tell your clients to recontract their annual plan with Applehq (which you own 100% of, have have dual share class). Apple labs holding your investor cash and payroll expenses will be subsidiary. You then raise Series A into Applehq. The disclaimer is your early investors will not love this. But if you pull it off it means you get the dual class control with later investors without needing to spend time discussing it with pre-seed investors.

4. 2026-10-11 05:33 UTCPost

   [I will not promote] dual-class structure YC friendly ? - Hi, we are two founders with equal split, and we want to know about dual-class structure and also the standards for removal from office terms that are standard. I read that the dual-class structure should be with sunset trigger to be investor friendly. And for removal (executive) is termination with or without cause. Can you give some insight on these two matters that we still have some doubt on them ? We are asking from a YC perspective.

5. 2026-10-09 18:20 UTCComment

   I watched some YC videos as someone suggested and focusing on reaching out to founders on linkedin here is a version of my connection note, its not a copy paste for all but the idea remains same Hey XXX, my name is <name>. I am researching AI native startups solving niche problems and came across <Company Name> and your profile. I would love to connect and have a conversation about your approach to data security and AI governance. Not trying to sell you anything, just gathering insights. If you have to improve What would you improve?