Office Hours with Michael Seibel

I've emailed Michael a couple of times with specific questions about our company. I know how busy he is, and we are not YC alumnus (yet) but still, somehow he always replied within 48 hs.

Thank you so much Michael and all of those who truly want to help entrepreneurs.

> How does YC feel about companies who don’t want to raise VC after the program?

Very interesting answer to this question. How does this work in practice? If a company decides against raising VC, what happens to YC's 7% stake? Profit sharing? Does the company buy back the 7%? Or does YC only see returns when there's a liquidity event?

Zapier was mentioned as an example of such a company. It raised a seed round and then decided against raising further rounds. In this case, how do the VCs see returns?

We don’t have to make money on every investment. In fact we only make money on very few. Which is fine by us.

I went to the YC hackathon a couple months ago and got to meet Sam, Adora, and Michael. They're all super cool and friendly. What stuck out to me about Michael were his thoughtful questions during everyone's pitches and the fact that he stuck around way after the hackathon ended to hang with everyone. Super chill, down to earth guy.