I am considering pitching my B2B fintech company to YCombinator this summer. But someone I trust is telling me that Y Combinator is best suited for B2C kind of startups and they may not understand my product (it’s quite niche) this person also tells me that I will be forced into meetings that don’t add value to the business. Anyone have experience with Y Combinator? Is this true? I have been working towards this deadline for the past 6 months and don’t want to give up at this point. Thanks.
Niche B2B is fine if you can demonstrate the end goal market size is large enough and that you are your founding team are the ones to seize that market. Think >50B market or larger, if your niche is too small now, is there a larger market down the line and how would you transition to tackle that larger market. They want to see how you can get to a 10B unicorn level, 1B is now too small. One of YC’s biggest value add is the signal you get. Since it’s B2B for fin tech, the signal will help with raising capital, and recruiting. Enterprise fintech customers will probably not care much that your have a YC badge. I think it’s worth it for both B2B and B2C. Their advice will likely help steer you much faster towards the critical things to move to the next level of growth.
I think 500 mil is OK
Biggest pile of crap is what your ‘person’ told you. I’m a YC alum. There’s no discrimination between b2b and b2c. Basic online research will confirm this.
Expect to not get in and continue working aggressively on your business.
Thanks to everyone - very valuable comments. Which west coast VCs should we target for B2B fintech? Getting funding is not the problem, but getting it from the right people that would make the right connections for you is the goal.
"smart money" is a myth. Any VC will try making connections but it will be mostly a waste of time and all the good connections you'll need to work on them anyways. Just get the money you need from a VC that's mostly hands off and let's you work without being a lunatic and that's the best you can hope for.
Forget west or east cost. Have you tried talking to Mr. Wonderful?
If SimplePickup succeeded with Y combinator then you can too.
🤣
Here’s a direct quote from PG: > It was one of many unforeseen advantages of the YC model (and specifically of making YC big) that B2B startups now have an instant market of hundreds of other startups ready at hand.
I did YC and majority of startups were b2b. B2C is rare
40% of most recent batch was B2B https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-winter-2019-batch-stats/
Stripe, DropBox (they do have some B2B), Docker, Plangrid, Gusto, Segment, Heroku, CoreOS, PagerDuty, Optimzely - list of some B2B YC companies that made it big. So print this list on a paper, roll it and give it to this “person” you’re talking about to shove it up his ass.
You forgot about the epoxy
I wouldn’t say docker “made it” yet The OS technology without a doubt did. The company? Ehhh
Thought about Barclays Accelerator? https://www.techstars.com/programs/barclays-nyc-program/
Sucks
Looks like shit.
This is like someone telling you don't work at Google before even interviewing. I'd say you should definitely give it a try. It's not like you have to accept it even if you are through. While I haven't done it (plan to in the future), I have read enough things which say the interview is really helpful. They ask some hard questions which you need answers for. It will really help at least the clarity in terms of your product. Also it's actually great for b2b, you get instant clients (other YC companies). Good luck with that :)