#YC Demo Day was PACKED. Takeaways: - Vast majority of companies going after enterprise applications of AI. Consumer and prosumer a distant second. Smattering of crypto. - $20M post-money cap is the new floor 🙂 - Deals are being done on the floor. I expect many companies to finish their rounds by EOD. 🤯 - SO MANY COLLEGE DROPOUTS - Very few women CEOs Here's one that's gonna be controversial: Progress made during the batch was impressive across the board, but not order of magnitude higher than before. Only a few companies were at >$500K ARR contracted (and even fewer with >$500K live). Most were still between $0 to $100K ARR, similar to other batches. Vibe coding and AI agents didn't seem to increase productivity by 10x. Yet. That said, the companies in general were very reasonable and I could actually see a lot of them building good businesses. The euphoria is ... kinda warranted. Yes. I believe YC (the fund) is gonna make A LOT of money on this batch. 😉 #Startups #VC #YC
Thank you for takeaways! Seems like after vibe coding we now need vibe GTMing.
What were the valuation multiples on those 20M post money caps?
I disagree. Big tech and Wall St will crash the markets to acquire hire these companies for cheap later. They have no significant market share, and what moats do these startups have? Most of them depend on cheap token prices and and cheap cloud costs. Thus they have neither control over costs nor margins, both dependent on the mercy of the big boys. If big enterprise can buy them for cheap why not crash the economy first?
Very few women CEOs building in Enterprise AI. Here's one!
Thank you for sharing your insights!
🔥 Spicy take, but fair. AI hype is real, but the revenue numbers show we’re still in iteration mode, not explosive growth mode. Also, $20M cap as a floor? Wild. Curious to see who actually scales beyond YC. 🚀 #Startups #YC
But who had the best hoodie? 🤑
CMO Algorand Foundation | Board Director | Advisor
1wGotta love the "smattering of crypto" :-) It's exciting to see all the Enterprise AI startups and, I agree, the potential is huge. At the same time, I don't envy the VCs who have to find the needle in the haystack. Initial revenue traction is no longer a reliable signal. Many of the start-ups I've seen can show impressive revenue traction (because the enterprise hunger is real), but it's not clear how sustainable that revenue growth is. Most companies rely on the same foundation models, and the moat is often just a thin layer on top of these models.