I have a lot of friends of mine who are decade+ YoE first time founders who have done very very well in YC.
Lots of Enterprise SaaS companies have went thru YC and done very well - you just don't hear about them as much because Direct Enterprise Sales doesn't require as much marketing.
There are similar B2C successes by older founders and non-Ivy/Ivy Tier founders.
> we're profitable, and can even articulate a realistic vision about how it becomes the next $100M household name
You could easily pitch a Seed or Pre-Seed round depending on the numbers and location right now.
I guarantee you that you are a 2nd or 3rd degree connect with plenty of VCs.
Leverage that network you have and doors will open
The YC label does help to open doors if you don't know or don't have the network to do it.
How many years do you have to go back to find 1 company that is on par with a dropbox or airbnb
i feel like if you went back 5 years it would be hard to even find more than 1-2 companies that has achieved a moderate level of mainstream success in the same way
It takes 10-15 years to successfully IPO an Enterprise/Infra/Cybersecurity SaaS (eg. ZS started in the mid-2000s, work on Rubrik started in the 2013 time period).
One notable mid-late state Enterprise firm I've been following is Vanta. Others have been very successful acquihires (eg. Squeen becoming a core part of the Security BU at Datadog). Salt Security is a good product as well, but will most likely be acquihired.
Usually, most enterprise companies choose to be acquired because even though the pot of gold at IPO is amazing, it is annoying to work on the same product for 10-15 years (though occasionally you do have startups just being stupid at strategy - looking at you Lacework smh, coulda acquihired Wiz or Orca 4-5 years ago).
I have a lot of friends of mine who are decade+ YoE first time founders who have done very very well in YC.
Lots of Enterprise SaaS companies have went thru YC and done very well - you just don't hear about them as much because Direct Enterprise Sales doesn't require as much marketing.
There are similar B2C successes by older founders and non-Ivy/Ivy Tier founders.
> we're profitable, and can even articulate a realistic vision about how it becomes the next $100M household name
You could easily pitch a Seed or Pre-Seed round depending on the numbers and location right now.
I guarantee you that you are a 2nd or 3rd degree connect with plenty of VCs.
Leverage that network you have and doors will open
The YC label does help to open doors if you don't know or don't have the network to do it.
(Note: this advice is US centric)