"When we surveyed our companies and asked them where they met investors, it was rarely at an actual pitch event."
Seems like the author might be learning a lesson based on Village Capital's apparently unsuccessful demo days and applying it to all demo days. As someone who's gone through YC's demo day and who's attended it a few times since, I can tell you that startups meet a lot of great investors there. That some demo days add no value to either startups or investors is not in doubt. That doesn't mean the structure of a demo day makes no sense.
One thing YC recently did to address some of the concerns he has is introduce "Investor Day" immediately after their demo day. Will be interesting to see how that experiment plays out. https://blog.ycombinator.com/investor-day/
All that said, his points about pitch day formats exacerbating existing biases is quite interesting. Would love to see more data on that.
Seems like the author might be learning a lesson based on Village Capital's apparently unsuccessful demo days and applying it to all demo days. As someone who's gone through YC's demo day and who's attended it a few times since, I can tell you that startups meet a lot of great investors there. That some demo days add no value to either startups or investors is not in doubt. That doesn't mean the structure of a demo day makes no sense.
One thing YC recently did to address some of the concerns he has is introduce "Investor Day" immediately after their demo day. Will be interesting to see how that experiment plays out. https://blog.ycombinator.com/investor-day/
All that said, his points about pitch day formats exacerbating existing biases is quite interesting. Would love to see more data on that.