Simon Willison’s Weblog

What’s the real reason for the drop in cash that Y Combinator now gives companies? What really precipitated this change? Were they not seeing the value for their money and wanted out?

29th November 2012

My answer to What’s the real reason for the drop in cash that Y Combinator now gives companies? What really precipitated this change? Were they not seeing the value for their money and wanted out? on Quora

I was in the first batch that got the 150k. I believe Paul Graham when he says that the amount was high enough that companies stuck around for longer than they would have otherwise (and founders were more likely to “fight over the corpse”) and that 80k would have been enough to get companies through to the point where they either raise more money or decide not to continue.

(We raised our seed round with way more than half of our 150k still in the bank)