Matetricks

Hey—congrats on the launch! I'm a big Valorant player (peaked Immortal 3 a few seasons back) and I've also used/talked to the people at visor.gg and pursuit.gg when they were around.

Totally understand the concerns here around being at the whim of the publisher, and previous companies have been blindsided by changes in how companies like Blizzard decide what is and isn't allowed on their platforms. Interestingly, YC has had a few of these companies go through similar experiences but I think they still think there's something to be built in this space.

For what it's worth, I think this is a good idea that's going to run into similar issues, regardless of what safeguards are put in place to avoid stepping on the publishers' toes. I'm sure there are some learnings from talking to Ivan or James from the last two YC companies that tried to do this. Also happy to share some more of my thoughts :)

Congrats Geoff! You helped us a lot when we were young, first-time founders and we learned a lot from you and Tim. Thanks again for all your advice—excited about the future for YC :)

It was called Chesscademy and we were raising $750k.

We were tackling the adaptive learning problem by creating tailored curricula. The plan was to move outside of chess to other subjects as we grew, but we found monetization to be very difficult.

Chris is an amazing person who takes the time to get to know you.

When we were fundraising, instead of having us do a regular pitch he took me to an event where Peter Thiel was giving a talk about his new book. We were a chess education company, so he thought it would be good for us to talk with Thiel as he's a chess master himself.

He didn't end up investing in us but my experience with him was much more memorable than any of the other meetings we had while fundraising.

How does this compare with other companies in the space like Chorus, Gong, and other YC companies like People.ai or VOIQ?

Congrats on the launch!