A New Standard Deal

by Geoff Ralston6/26/2020

We are making two changes to our standard deal in conjunction with a recent fundraise. Starting with the Winter 2021 batch, our deal will be $125,000 for 7% equity on a post-money safe, and we will reduce the amount of our pro rata right to 4% of subsequent rounds. In the coming years, this will enable us to fund as many as 3000 more companies.

For background, YC originally gave about $20,000 for 6% of a company. In 2011, Yuri Milner and SV Angel began offering an additional $150k to every startup in YC. We continued this program with new investors and reduced the deal to about $100k for 7%. In 2014, we increased that amount to $120k and in 2018 to $150k when we raised our last fund.

We have changed our deal several times over the years as we have raised new funds, modified budgets, and to match the current environment and economy. We do not expect this to be the last time we change the deal, but we do feel this is the right place to be for the next several years.

Author

  • Geoff Ralston

    Geoff Ralston is the former President of Y Combinator and has been with YC since 2011. Prior to YC, he built one of the first web mail services, RocketMail which became Yahoo Mail in 1997.