Can you clarify what "the program" refers to? Is this the new variant where demo days are discarded in favor of mock board meetings (as discussed in the blog)? Or is the demo day/mock board meeting just the last piece, and the underlying program is the same? Thanks.
When we graduated. The cohort class would vote the top 2 finishers among themselves. Which then would get the financing. This was a horrible idea!
It became very political. Basically we had 4 major sessions each 3-4 days alternating between Salt Lake City and Houston. At the conclusion of each session, we would rank each company on a set of criteria. The total score would rank each company. However, the last ranking would determine the final winners.
We finished #1 after the first session. However, I soon realized giving feedback (even privately) became rather contentious. People could easily mistake a genuine feedback for a political move to downgrade a company for scoring reasons. As a result, the value of cohort feedback diminished a lot.
The mock board meeting, was probably one of the more valuable things in the program. But the problem was the time with the mock board members was short, these "board" members had very little context about the company (so not very realistic). As a result, you had to spend most of the "board meeting" time educating them about your business before getting into the actual practice of a board meeting.
If you're in a remote location or city, with very little resources, then the program might be somewhat valuable. But if you live in any big cities, especially silicon valley. Then there is no value to it.
This is bad. The biggest value I get from YC are my peers from the batch and other alumni. We still reach out constantly and ask each other for pieces of code, business leads,etc.
YC puts A LOT OF EFFORT to build the community in the right way.
