A startup I invested in 7 years ago after meeting them at YC demo day just became a unicorn.

I’ll probably do well with this one, but I’ve also had many many bad experiences with startups I met at demo day.

Demo day horror stories:

The most outlandish is probably the founder who quit to start a right wing social network just before Trump got elected.

Same guy started a very public fight with one of the YC partners.

Why would you do that?

To drum up interest for his right wing social network.

The founder who took the money he raised at demo day to fund his lifestyle traveling the world.

Talked a good talk about helping the African people with his startup.

The founders who shut down their startup because they only had $800k committed for the round instead of the $2m they wanted.

I remember sitting in a cafe somewhere in SOMA trying to convince them to take the $800k and make it work.

It's their startup.

I'm just an investor.

The founder who had an acquisition offer but got into a lawsuit with one of his investors.

I blame the investor for that one.

Needless to say, the deal went away.

The founder who went from edtech startup to crypto fund.

Till this day I have no idea what happened to my investment in that startup.

I could go on.

The point is, for every piece of news about startups hitting billion dollar valuation and investors making specatcular returns, there are countless other stories of failure, incompetence or outright fraud.

Very few investors talk about those.

In any case, well done Mashgin.

No drama, no hype.

Just heads down building a great product.

www.forbes.com/sites/rashishrivastava/2022/05/09/mashgin-hits-15-billion-valuation-with-ai-powered-se...