October 30, 2019

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

37 minutes

We've cut down the ninth week of lectures to be even shorter and combined them into one podcast.

First, a lecture from Carolynn Levy. Carolynn is a partner at YC. Her lecture covers modern startup financing.

Then a lecture from Jared Friedman. Jared is also a partner at YC. His lecture focuses on advice for hard-tech and biotech founders.

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Topics

00:00 - Intro

00:33 - Carolynn Levy - Modern Startup Financing

1:33 - The basics: form a corporation, need money to grow?, sell a part of the company

2:58 - Fundraising terms

3:58 - What has changed: structure, access, focus

5:10 - What hasn't changed: preferred stock financing, valuation and dilution, communication

6:42 - Old way of raising early money: Series A preferred stock financing

8:33 - What was broken?

9:33 - The transition: bridge loan financings

10:46 - Realization: convertible promissory notes are a better way to fund early stage startups

12:01 - Modernization of the convertible - SAFE (Simple Agreement for Future Equity)

14:03 - When do priced rounds happen?

15:12 - Is modern early stage financing perfected?

18:01 - Takeaways

19:30 - Jared Friedman - Advice for Hard-tech and Biotech Founders

20:25 - What is a hard-tech company?

21:35 - Why start a hard-tech company?

25:06 - YC is the largest bio and hard-tech seed investor in the world

25:49 - How much of YC's advice applies to hard-tech founders?

26:33 - How do you make progress when you have a "heavy MVP"?

31:49 - How do you prove people will want your product, if you haven't built it yet?

32:57 - Letter of Intent

34:10 - Fundraising for hard-tech and biotech companies

36:15 - Final thought