Gotcha. My hunch (I could be wrong) is that YC won’t back a services/consultancy. They’re looking for products that offer a 10x or better exit.
Discussion
I find the process of putting together a pitch to be worthwhile. It forces one to answer questions like what’s your product, who’s your client, how’s it being monetized. And I know I won’t be ready to put together a team until I can communicate it clearly and efficiently to prospective team members.
One option, which may not fit into a 60 second pitch, would be to use smaller projects like the example I gave to build out the Grapevine tech stack, and once that’s built out enough, then build platforms of my own: a decentralized wikipedia, a decentralized Yelp, etc. Web of trust touches every corner of the internet, and it’s all going to have to be rebuilt, one platform at a time.
But you’re right: pitching it as a services / consultancy would be the wrong approach.
How’s this revised elevator pitch:
“The Grapevine enables you and your trusted community to identify who is trustworthy, and in what context, so they can help you curate content, facts, and information.
Web of trust touches every aspect of the internet. Our tech stack will allow all of it to be rebuilt, one platform at a time. And even though they will be standalone products, your identity and your data will be portable, stored using decentralized protocols like nostr, which means the Grapevine will span and connect every platform that uses it.”
Oops - minus the first “trusted”