#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

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