As an investor, I think this will accomplish a few things:<p>1) A lot of scheduling friction will disappear. The week just after demo day is usually crazy because hundreds of founders and investors are all trying to schedule meetings with each other, and there are inevitable race conditions that lead to a lot of rescheduling and wasted time. (E.g. I email three founders with 5 possible time slots, and they all reply and ask for the same time slot.)<p>2) I think this will be great for investors who act quickly and go by their gut. There are plenty of investors out there -- especially those who write smaller checks -- for whom 20 minutes will be enough time to make a quick decision.<p>3) I'm not sure if this will be great for investors like me that approach investing more methodically rather than with their gut.* I love 1-hour meetings because that's plenty of time for both sides to dig in and learn a lot about each other. Twenty minutes feels very short to me, and I'm not sure if a 20-minute meeting is more likely to save me and the founder from an unnecessary 1-hour meeting, or if I end up having just as many 1-hour meeting -- but now with an extra 20 minutes tacked on.<p>That said, I don't want to judge this process before I try it at least once, and I'm looking forward to trying it out in August.<p>* FWIW, there are great gut-based investors and great methodical investors, and I'm not implying either approach is better.
> ...if Investing/General Partner is not present, the slot will be cancelled.<p>These seems to be an attempt to reinforce FOMO to force key people to attend demo day. Resorting to these tactics implies a pretty big perceived power imbalance... Eg. is this a reaction to senior partners sending their underlings because of DDay burnout? If so, this could backfire. The senior partners might just not show up (still), and force founders to attend offsite meetings later anyway (in addition to the new DDay meetings). In other words: This might just be a net increase in founder effort without changing the investor-founder DDay dynamic. After all: What do the senior partners gain / lose by this new situation? Not much (aside from FOMO), I'd guess. But the best investors will always be in demand anyway -- whether they attend DDay or not.
Are investors weighted by their fund's size? Or are founders told the ranking they were given by each interested investor?<p>I can imagine many firms go into demo day with the resources and willingness to fund 10-20 ventures, whereas others are looking for only one or two.<p>I would much rather be the fifth choice of the former than third choice of the latter. If I knew my position in the stack I could figure it out for myself, or it could be calculated for me if YC is trying to avoid the negative consequences of making that transparent.
Depending on how this is organized, this can be a spectacularly BAD idea.<p>Investors would love it because they now have visual confirmation of who all are the "hot" matches. I bet everyone other than the Sequoias would be straining to look at who the hot startups are...and completely ignore the ones in front of them.<p>For the long tail of a YC batch - the ones that are not hotly contested - this could be a disaster. Previously, investors would be forced to actually look at a startup and decide <i>in isolation</i>. Now they can simply look at the Big VC.<p>I can completely see why investors would love this.<p>One might as well make public the interest match list and rank it by order of "likes" received.<p>People are perfectly capable of driving up and down the Bay Area. Guess what - we get a few free meals and coffees out of it.<p>EDIT: guess what, you can bring associates to tailgate Sequoia & A16Z investors.<p>EDIT2: what you guys might be trying to do is be helpful. For example, this lets you force-schedule investor meetings for startups that had no investor interest and term it as "the AI did it!". But I'm not sure if that will be really helpful ... at the cost of drastically reducing FOMO factor for most other startups.
Is there a signaling issue introduced at all?<p>1) can investors see that a startup is not at the venue or at a table all morning and get a feel for demand?<p>2) can investors gather any information from the matching results to get a feel for demand?<p>3) is there a chance for investors to send false signals by showing their interest in other startups artificially? Vice versa for startups at all (would require collusion so unlikely)<p>2 and 3 not so much but regarding number one, will physical observation of the meeting space introduce any signaling oppurtinities be it genuine or fraudulent by either party?
Seems like a solid idea. I honestly thought something like this was already in place so it makes sense. Still though the first thing I thought of is what it might feel like to be part of the statistic few who get zero investors clicking the button (I mean statistically this should happen at least a couple of times due to the batch size, right? Or am I severely underestimating the amount of investors that attempts do demo day?)
This is great, it would have saved us (GitLab) a lot of driving around. It is one of those idea's that are very obvious in hindsight but for sure I didn't think of it.
The stable marriage problem has two natural algorithms that produce a stable matching: one algorithm give priority to women's choices and one gives priority to men's choices.<p>If the algorithm used by yc to produce the matching for each slot is based on these, which algorithm is used? The one that gives priority to women's choices or to men's choices? A variation that doesn't give priority to any gender choices?
> Using both these ranked inputs, our software will create “Investor Day” schedules for each investor and each startup, which will take place at the Computer History Museum on Wednesday 8/24.<p>Sounds like the backend of a dating site for startups and investors.
This is almost exactly how some law schools run their on-campus interviewing process (except the bit about actual decision-makers being required to attend). From what I've observed, it works really well. Pre-screening for at least some level of mutual interest can save everyone a lot of time.
From the way they've set this up, it appears to be optimal for investors and pessimal for founders. Anyone else notice the same or disagree? It's in the proof for a particular theorem.
"all the companies will be set up at tables to meet with you face to face."<p>A study on speed dating showed an increased opinion from the person that approaches the other. Intentional?
I don't know, your answer very wrong to me.
What do you even know about math.<p>Did you even win the Putnam, if not then please don't be bolder than the parent poster.