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

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 . *** 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