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#150 - Startup School Week 9 Recap - Carolynn Levy on Modern Startup Financing and Jared Friedman’s Advice for Hard-tech and Biotech Founders

#150 - Startup School Week 9 Recap - Carolynn Levy on Modern Startup Financing and Jared Friedman’s Advice for Hard-tech and Biotech Founders

Y Combinator Startup Podcast
Oct 30, 2019 37 min
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About this episode

<p>We've cut down the ninth week of lectures to be even shorter and combined them into one podcast.<br><br>First, a lecture from Carolynn Levy. Carolynn is a partner at YC. Her lecture covers <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qWZALyGSmg">modern startup financing</a>.<br><br>Then a lecture from <a href="https://twitter.com/snowmaker">Jared Friedman</a>. Jared is also a partner at YC. His lecture focuses on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1DlZWfI6rk">advice for hard-tech and biotech founders</a>.<br><br>***<br><br><b>Topics<br></b><br>00:00 - Intro<br><br>00:33 - Carolynn Levy - Modern Startup Financing<br><br>1:33 - The basics: form a corporation, need money to grow?, sell a part of the company<br><br>2:58 - Fundraising terms<br><br>3:58 - What has changed: structure, access, focus<br><br>5:10 - What hasn't changed: preferred stock financing, valuation and dilution, communication<br><br>6:42 - Old way of raising early money: Series A preferred stock financing<br><br>8:33 - What was broken?<br><br>9:33 - The transition: bridge loan financings<br><br>10:46 - Realization: convertible promissory notes are a better way to fund early stage startups<br><br>12:01 - Modernization of the convertible - SAFE (Simple Agreement for Future Equity)<br><br>14:03 - When do priced rounds happen?<br><br>15:12 - Is modern early stage financing perfected?<br><br>18:01 - Takeaways<br><br>19:30 - Jared Friedman - Advice for Hard-tech and Biotech Founders<br><br>20:25 - What is a hard-tech company?<br><br>21:35 - Why start a hard-tech company?<br><br>25:06 - YC is the largest bio and hard-tech seed investor in the world<br><br>25:49 - How much of YC's advice applies to hard-tech founders?<br><br>26:33 - How do you make progress when you have a "heavy MVP"?<br><br>31:49 - How do you prove people will want your product, if you haven't built it yet?<br><br>32:57 - Letter of Intent<br><br>34:10 - Fundraising for hard-tech and biotech companies<br><br>36:15 - Final thought<br></p>

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