As we have said many times before, we work hard to keep a level playing field for all investors in the YC ecosystem. Helpful early-stage investors that come after YC are crucial to the ongoing success of our companies, and we believe high-quality companies and fairness are the ways to attract them.
Some YC alumni are starting to raise venture funds, and as the YC community gets bigger and more successful, we expect to see more instances of this.
On the whole, we’re delighted about this.
But we want to be very clear that alumni that raise venture funds are treated as investors and not alumni—for example, they come to regular demo day, not alumni demo day.
We also want to be clear that none of these funds have any special access from YC (though the YC network is pretty tight, and many of the social relationships are strong). Sometimes this point gets lost in the noise and people get confused, so we thought we’d double-clarify this.
