(YC asks people to decide that day whether or not to accept an offer from us, but we do this because at that point they already know all they need to, not to pre-empt other offers. There is no other seed firm that decides after us.)
If another seed firm did set its decision date a few days or weeks after, would you then give teams more time to decide?
That would be incredibly gracious of YC -- indeed beyond what I would expect of the category leader. But that seems to be the implication of your parenthetical.
Sure. Whenever a group has a specific reason they need more time to decide, we've always given it to them. We once interviewed a startup that got an acquisition offer right in the middle of YC interview weekend. Not only did we give them a couple weeks to see how things played out, we advised them on negotiating with the acquirer.
I agree to some extent, but I still like to think integrity is a function of how you behave at all times, not just when it is advantageous.
For example in the situation above - I perceive you as the kind of person who really believes what he writes and wants to help people get up and running. I mean, your essays date back before YC.
So in my mind, advising this group during the acquisition offer, even if there was a chance you would miss out, is showing a true adherence to some kind of ethical/moral code.
I agree with froo. This is definitely not a powerless situation, as you got to advise the startup. If you had less integrity, you could easily come up with plausible arguments why should they accept your funding before getting acquired.
> Whenever a group has a specific reason they need more time to decide, we've always given it to them
I read before that when you call teams with your offer, they have 5 minutes to accept. Did this change?
Also, I read that your offer is non-negotiable. Yet this advice says to try to negotiate. Did you change this also?
As for the Fleaflicker example, my understanding is he got an acquisition offer before you made your own offer, so it's not comparable to 99% of the other cases. If you do indeed now give teams reasonable amounts of time to decide and negotiate the YC investment terms, that's a significant improvement. Otherwise it sounds like you're doing the same thing you are condemning other seed funders for, with the excuse that "well, we decide last so it's okay for us to require an immediate decision and not negotiate," which seems disingenuous.
If another seed firm did set its decision date a few days or weeks after, would you then give teams more time to decide?
That would be incredibly gracious of YC -- indeed beyond what I would expect of the category leader. But that seems to be the implication of your parenthetical.