Michael Seibel
Partner Emeritus & General Partner, Y Combinator. On 3 shows, 35 appearances, plus 2 compilation re-airs not counted. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorfounderexecutivehost@mwseibel ↗LinkedIn ↗michaelseibel.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Michael Seibel was the co-founder and CEO of Justin.tv and Socialcam. He served as Managing Director of Y Combinator's accelerator program from 2016 to 2024 and co-hosts the Dalton & Michael series.
3shows
35appearances
307statements
15resolved
13supported
1contradicted
87%fully supported
64said about them ↓ Everything Michael Seibel said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Michael Seibel: Angels write 10% of checks just to avoid saying no
“Category three that people don't talk about. If they ask me, it will be uncomfortable for me to say no, so I will write them a check. I'll tell you that in my experience, this is up to 10% of the time. I am hoping the founder doesn't ask me for money. Because …”
Seibel: Hiring a designer for a startup pitch deck is a mistake
“If you need a designer to build a slide deck, you're doing it wrong. And here's an even deeper, more important point. Your designer has no idea what the most interesting and important points of your pitch are. So if you hand them your pitch to design, they wil…”
Seibel: VCs urged startups to burn cash to drive their own markups
“What's unfortunate is that they had just gone through this two year cycle where investors were basically screaming at them to burn and raise because investors were getting markups and they were raising new funds”
Seibel: Investors hate acknowledging their incentives misalign with founders
“I think that in general investors are allergic when we tell founders that there might be situations where their incentives and the founders incentives are not aligned perfectly.”
Seibel: VCs tell YC partners not to advise founders against high burn
“They also always tell us like, hey, like we're funding your companies. Like you shouldn't be like, you know, like telling the founders not to have high burn.”
An 'A' investor provides capital, signs paperwork, and stays quiet
“An A investor gives you money, signs paperwork when you want them to, and shuts the fuck up. That's an A. There's a lot of room below an A. There's not a lot of room above.”
University Entrepreneurship Centers Accept Non-Technical Teams That VCs Would Reject
“Over the past two weeks, I've talked to a number of, kind of, directors of entrepreneur centers, and the constant thing that I'm surprised by is that they know these things that I'm talking about, but they still accept teams that don't abide by these rules. So…”
Seibel: Startups must use tactics that would get corporate employees fired
“And like, if you play the big company game, they will always beat you. You always have to be thinking about, what would you have gotten fired for at the big company? That should be your playbook at the startup.”
Seibel: VC skill is winning competitive deals, not theoretical thesis picking
“The skill is often getting the thing taking off to take your money versus someone else's money, not picking amongst things that haven't launched yet and having feces about why one's going to do better than the other.”
Seibel: Every Successful YC Story Began With Widely Dismissed Idea
“Well, I think that's what's so funny is because that's the, every successful YC story, that's the story in hindsight, right? It's like, everyone thought the idea sucked. It was off trend because it was off trend.”
Michael Seibel: Startups need separate pitch explanations for investors and customers
“You need two different answers to what do you do. One that you give investors, and another one you give customers, and they're different. The words on the front page of your website are for customers. If you're using that for investors, more often than not, yo…”
Seibel: Pitch descriptions should prioritize 100% clarity over complete accuracy
“Your goal should be 80% accurate, a hundred percent clear, not a hundred percent accurate, 50% clear.”
Seibel: Investors convince themselves to invest the more they talk
“What most people don't realize about investors is that you're not really convincing an investor to invest. They're convincing themselves to invest. The more they can talk, the more they can talk themselves into giving you money.”
Seibel: Building in Austin, Seattle, or New York is settling
“It's really easy to say, well, you know, I can be in the game in Austin. I can be in the game in Seattle. There are investors there. There are people there. I can be in the game in New York. And I wish that we were more honest that like, yeah, you can play bas…”
Conformist startup founders mistakenly treat investors as their customers
“You know, one of the things that we say sometimes at YC is that don't make the investor your customer. But a lot of these conformists who are getting into startups, that's what they do. Like they want an idea an investor is going to like, they want to act the …”
Seibel says 40% of the Summer 2022 batch applied with only ideas
“Literally, 40% of the last batch came in with just an idea. Most of them were working when they applied, were at work, working jobs when they applied.”
Seibel: YC Summer 2022 batch valuations held steady at $15M–$25M caps
“Prices are almost exactly the same as they were during the last batch when it was like VC heaven on earth and money was flowing like crazy. We saw. 15 to 25. Some companies raised at 30. Almost no change from the last batch.”
Seibel: Giving up massive equity early blocks later-stage funding
“And what they didn't tell that founder is that every subsequent investor would say to themselves, huh, this investor put in a relatively small amount of capital, bought so much of the company that the founders are going to get so diluted that they're not going…”
Seibel argues charging $50,000 for priced round legal fees is predatory
“It shouldn't cost 50,000 dollars to a price round. Like you're just ripping off founders, pure and simple ripping off founders.”
Seibel: VCs often fund repeat founders for internal firm politics
“What I've also seen for second time founders is that oftentimes for an investor, it's more of a catch. It like helps you build your reputation in your firm, or it helps you get the deal approved. And like, so oftentimes there's like internal political reasons …”
Seibel: Spending more money does not accelerate product-market fit
“Spending more money allows product market fit to happen faster.”
Seibel: VCs Offer to Invest After YC Admission Despite Earlier Rejections
“I think we see this in practice, too, because we will see founders who will pitch to investors, get no's, apply to YC, get into YC, and those same investors will say, now I want to invest in your company, and nothing has changed. No fundamental thing has chang…”
Seibel: Ignore investor rejection reasons until hearing them across 15 to 25 pitches
“When founders are fundraising, it's like the first thing, the first time they tell me there's a rejection and a why, I ignore it completely. If they've gotten like 15, 20, 25 rejections, I then ask, are the whys consistent? And only if then the whys are consis…”
The other half of the tape: Michael Seibel's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 57 times in 28 episodes across the shows. 7 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Mike Maples 8Tom Blomfield 6Shola Akinlade 6Seth Bannon 5Geoff Ralston 5Craig Cannon 4Paul Buchheit 2Harry Stebbings 2
Statements about Michael Seibel, by other people (7)
Maples: Zenefits Was YC's Only Startup With PMF That Failed
“The only one he could name was Zenefits, and they broke the law.”
Gross: Airbnb likely would not exist without Michael Seibel and YC
“It is less likely that Airbnb would have been created had Michael Seibel not recruited the founders to Y Combinator, introduced them to Paul Graham, the program had been set up in place, the investment been available, demo day being available”
Blomfield: Michael Seibel balances brutally hard feedback with genuine warmth
“Michael Seibel I did a batch with just before I got partnership, and he has this incredible way of giving the most brutally hard feedback you can imagine. The founder absolutely needs to hear, and then finishing off with his This, like, heartwarming chortle, t…”
Caldwell: Startup Investing Experience Does Not Make Acquiring First Customers Easier
“No matter what I know from investing in startups, that does not mean getting first customers is going to be easy for me or for Michael or for anyone. It is freaking hard. And this zero to one is always the trap.”
Lemkin: 85% of Y Combinator batch startups hit their funding target
“85% of their batch get funded. And they hit their funding target.”
Ralston: Founders must target problems so dire users accept imperfect solutions
“You need to find problems so dire that users are willing to try half-baked The one imperfect solutions.”
Ralston: Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston, Sam Altman, and Michael Seibel to speak at Startup School
“Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston will be taking part in the course and giving some of their wisdom, which is also broad need to founders everywhere in the world, but we're also going to have other YC partners. Sam Altman, who's the president of Y Combinator,…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
the Y Combinator Startup Podcast 32
20VC 23
the Official SaaStr Podcast 2
2025 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2024 7 mentions in 2 episodes 4 per episode
2023 8 mentions in 3 episodes 3 per episode
- Mike Maples: Lessons from SVB; Crisis Management Tips; USD's Status as the Reserve Currency | E993 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Is the VC Model Broken? Jason Lemkin, Mike Maples, Eric Paley & Harry Stebbings Debate | E1062 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- How to Navigate Strategic Change for Growth with SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
2022 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2020 1 mention in 1 episode
2019 4 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
- A CS Education That's Free Until You Get a Job - Austen Allred of Lambda School · Y Combinator
- Jared Friedman - Advice for Hard-tech and Biotech Founders · Y Combinator
- What Shutting Down Your Startup Feels Like - Avni Patel Thompson of Poppy with Kat Manalac · Y Combinator
- every mention in 2019, scene by scene →
2018 18 mentions in 9 episodes 2 per episode
- Helping African Businesses Get Paid, Shola Akinlade of Paystack · Y Combinator
- Paul Buchheit - Startup Investor School Day 2 · Y Combinator
- David Rusenko - How To Find Product Market Fit · Y Combinator
- A Conversation with Ooshma Garg - Moderated by Adora Cheung · Y Combinator
- Carolynn Levy And Panel (Jon Levy, Jason Kwon) - Startup Legal Mechanics · Y Combinator
- Geoff Ralston and Adora Cheung Discuss Startup School · Y Combinator
- Elad Gil Shares Advice from the High Growth Handbook, a Guide to Scaling Startups · Y Combinator
- Elad Gil and Pejman Nozad - Startup Investor School Day 3 · Y Combinator
- 1 more episode that year, every mention in 2018 →
2017 8 mentions in 4 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: Why We Will Continue To See An Explosion In Deep Tech Financing, Why Much of Silicon Valley's Talent Is Going To Waste & How Fund Cycles Need To Be Adjusted To Work With Deep Tech with Seth Bannon, Founding Partner @ Fifty Years
- Be Wary of Solving a Small, Rare Problem - Des Traynor of Intercom · Y Combinator
- The Challenges a Repeat Founder Faces - Tikhon Bernstam · Y Combinator
- 20VC: YC's Daniel Gross on How YC Can Democratise AI & Reduce Incumbency Advantages, Why ML Enabled Software Will Eat The Software That Ate The World & Whether AI Will Produce Independent Companies or Be Technology within Incumbents
- every mention in 2017, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Michael's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Y COMBINATORLEDGER | Partner Emeritus & General Partner, Y Combinatorhost | 35 | 261 | 86% 12/14 | full record on the Y Combinator Startup Podcast → |
| 20VCLEDGER | Partner Emeritus & General Partner, Y Combinator | 0 | 0 | 100% 1/1 | full record on 20VC → |
| SAASTRLEDGER | Partner Emeritus & General Partner, Y Combinator | 0 +2 | 46 | — | full record on the Official SaaStr Podcast → |