Late last night the 43 startups in the most recent Y Combinator class got quite a surprise. Start Fund, a new fund created by DST’s Yuri Milner as an individual and SV Angel, offered each of the companies a $150,000 investment in the form of a convertible note with no cap and no discount.
Most of these companies are still in stealth mode, and Start Fund hasn’t seen them. They made the offer based on the Y Combinator stamp of approval.
The startups are jumping on board. 36 of the 43 startups in the class had signed the paperwork to take the loan before the event was even over last night, says David Lee, a managing partner at SV Angel who’s also managing the Start Fund. “As of 3 pm today we’ve received 39 confirmed signature pages, and we believe the rest are awaiting approval from their attorneys.”
Lee also says this isn’t a gift, it’s an investment. He says “These aren’t gifts, we’re not a charity. It’s an investment that gives these startups that first critical $150k that gets them to product. We intend to make money on these investments.”
He added – “This is a chance for us to invest in some of the best young entrepreneurs in the world.”
The funds will be wired to startups in the next few days, says Lee.
Y Combinator is a venture fund which focuses on seed investments to startup companies. It offers financing as well as business consulting along with other opportunities to 2-4 person companies looking to take an idea to a product. Y Combinator looks for companies with “good” ideas over companies with experience and a business model. The company made its first investments in Summer 2005. Y Combinator selects companies to finance and consult with twice a year. They are located in...
Yuri started investing in Internet companies in 1999. In 2005, he founded Digital Sky Technologies, Limited (now Mail.ru Group) to focus on Internet investments in the Russian speaking world. Under his leadership, Mail.ru Group performed approximately 75 transactions and built what is now the leading Russian language website in terms of users. Mail.ru Group is also the seventh most popular website globally in terms of page views or minutes spent online according to Comscore. Yuri is now the non-executive...
SV Angel is the micro VC firm located in Silicon Valley and founded by angel investors, Ron Conway and David Lee. SV Angel provides capital investments to early stage companies focused on the Internet, e-commerce, and information technology markets. SV Angel is a venture fund which has raised investment from external investors or limited partners in industry parlance. In April 2010, the fund announced its size of $20 million. Per the firm, SV Angel initially expected to raise a...
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