The money is probably the least valuable thing we've gotten out of YC. When we came here, we had no network and no connections to the valley. As part of YC, we've gotten:
1) Contacts - we can sit down with just about anyone we can think of.
2) Alumni - the YC alumni network is pretty huge and the alums have been super helpful. We've gotten advice, design feedback, encouragement when we were having darker days, and we've used them as product guinea pigs.
3) Brand name - being able to say "We're a YC company" makes people instantly pay attention to you.
4) Advice - yc has seen a whole bunch of startups. They were able to to save us from going down a bunch of bad paths, even when we didn't want their advice. It's hard to quantify, but I feel like I have a better understanding of how to build something that people will actually use because of yc.
4) A support structure - Office hours with pg, jl, harj, et al are indispensable. These are now available to us forever.
Before getting accepted into yc, my cofounder and I had a bunch of discussions about how much of the company we were willing to give up. We were nervous and thought the upper bound (around 10%) seemed really high. In retrospect 10% would have been a totally reasonable price to pay for what we've gotten in return.
I think it was even more helpful considering we weren't already in the valley, but I think most of the benefits apply even if you are already here. This is from asking much more established co's. FWIW we were coming from NYC.
Our startup is HireHive. Totally forgot to put it in the profile.
1) Contacts - we can sit down with just about anyone we can think of.
2) Alumni - the YC alumni network is pretty huge and the alums have been super helpful. We've gotten advice, design feedback, encouragement when we were having darker days, and we've used them as product guinea pigs.
3) Brand name - being able to say "We're a YC company" makes people instantly pay attention to you.
4) Advice - yc has seen a whole bunch of startups. They were able to to save us from going down a bunch of bad paths, even when we didn't want their advice. It's hard to quantify, but I feel like I have a better understanding of how to build something that people will actually use because of yc.
4) A support structure - Office hours with pg, jl, harj, et al are indispensable. These are now available to us forever.
Before getting accepted into yc, my cofounder and I had a bunch of discussions about how much of the company we were willing to give up. We were nervous and thought the upper bound (around 10%) seemed really high. In retrospect 10% would have been a totally reasonable price to pay for what we've gotten in return.