What We Learned Funding Hard Tech

Dalton and PB talk about funding hard tech at YC and tips for hard tech founders today. Discussion includes: why Sam Altman wanted to invest in hard tech at YC, investing in Ginkgo Bioworks, early YC investments in hard tech (Oklo, Rigetti, Helion), how Sam recruited the founders, why it was widely ridiculed at the time, why it worked, why so many of them were successful, investing in BillionToOne, working with Chad Rigetti on his demo slides, OpenAI starting at YC, what type of hard tech founders that Standard Capital is looking for, how the hard-tech founders at Standard Capital help each other, why financing risk is real, why making a hard-tech company is like performing a series of miracles, and how hard tech founders should raise capital from investors. – Standard Capital is the AI-native Series A fund. Learn more at standardcap.com – About Dalton: Dalton Caldwell is Co-Founder and Partner of Standard Capital. He spent 12 years at Y Combinator, where he served as Managing Partner, worked across 25 YC batches, and advised more than 1,000 startups. His investments include Whatnot, Brex, GitLab, PostHog, Retool, Rappi, Razorpay, and Oklo. Before becoming an investor, Dalton founded imeem and App.net. About Paul: Paul Buchheit is Co-Founder and Partner of Standard Capital. He created Gmail, was Google employee No. 23, built the original prototype for AdSense, and coined the company’s “Don’t be evil” motto. He later co-founded FriendFeed, which was acquired by Facebook. Paul spent nearly 15 years as a partner at Y Combinator and became an early investor in companies including OpenAI, Stripe, Airbnb, DoorDash, Reddit, Twitch, Instacart, Rippling, and Perplexity. – Are you an AI builder? Check out StandardDB. Discover offers, credits, tools, and partner programs from the StandardDB ecosystem.