Michael Seibel
Partner Emeritus & General Partner, Y Combinator · 35 appearances on the record.
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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.
261statements → 52claims → 14claims resolved → 86%fully supported → 3.85/5average certainty → 2.18/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 35said about them ↓
12 supported 1 partly supported 1 contradicted 2 not yet assessed 36 not checkable as stated how the 52 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
2 predictions · 50 assertions · 14 opinions · 174 insights · 18 disclosures · 3 what ifs · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 52 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 14 are resolved, 2 are not yet assessed, and 36 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.
The record, in short
What the tape says about how Michael argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.
Their most notable supported claim
Seibel: Stripe deliberately launched as the most expensive payment product
“When the Stripe Finders came to speak at YC, the other detail they added was it was the most expensive product in the market. Like, to make sure people really wanted it, they didn't give it away for free, they didn't price it comparably, they made it more expe…”
Expressed certainty vs assessment result
weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet
How they sound: not measured why? →
We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Michael Seibel on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.
Everything Michael Seibel said on the Y Combinator Startup Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
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.”
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.”
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…”
Seibel: FAANG retention relies on unvested equity being 3x your savings
“If they can keep you spending your entire salary, and if they can keep the money that you haven't vested yet larger than the amount of money that you have in your savings by like two to three X, you never leave.”
Seibel: Big tech warehouses talent defensively to prevent competitor growth
“In many ways, this is a defensive tactic to warehouse talent. Out of the fear that maybe someone else can use you in a way that can hurt the company.”
Seibel: Microsoft Wins by Copying Startup Innovations Years Later
“A structural advantage with a product that's good enough can win. And man, it really helps when some startups specs the whole product for you. Right? Like Microsoft's move is to not innovate the good enough product. It's to copy it. Maybe five to 10 years late…”
Seibel: Twitch blocked video to force an ISP into free peering
“What we did is that after 10 minutes of people watching free, free live video, we just put up a big thing that blocked the video that said, your ISP is not doing a free peering relationship with us, so we can no longer serve you video. If you'd like to call to…”
Seibel: Domain-expert investors are often more pessimistic than generalists
“I think sometimes counterintuitively investors who know slightly less about your space can be a little bit more grasses greener, like, optimistic than folks who know more about your space.”
Seibel: Genius is often mistaken for discipline in startup execution
“Too often, genius is mistaken for discipline. It's just like, you know, a lot of people think, oh, this person out executed all their peers because they were smarter, and it's like, that assumes the peers were actually working on the thing they said they were …”
The other half of the tape: Michael Seibel's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 32 times in 19 episodes on the Y Combinator Startup Podcast. 3 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Shola Akinlade 6Geoff Ralston 5Craig Cannon 4Paul Buchheit 2Dylan Field 2David Rusenko 2Chas Englander 2Tikhon Bernstam 1
Statements about Michael Seibel, by other people (3)
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.”
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
2025 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2024 1 mention in 1 episode
2022 2 mentions 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 →