It may not necessarily be inefficient. YC has an established brand. Initial YC investors know they will get the best possible terms, so they would be wise to offer the max value. The start-up it could take this "max" valuation to all future investors.
The alternative would be a low initial offer which would essentially keep anyone else from paying more. In essence the YC start-ups are giving the initial investor a money back guarantee on the difference between their offer and the lowest offer.
I still think the homepage leaves out a lot of the value. The explainer video only sets the problem, not the solution.
Problem: Divorce is messy and it's the second most stressful event you and your Children will ever go through. The average divorce takes a year with many dragging on for many years,and inculde _________ trips to court with an average cost of $27,000.
Solution: Our initial trial of 104 families Wevorced in an average of 89 days with 1 trip to court (That's not per family that out all 104 families) and our service costs a fraction of what is normally paid in court fees.
We are able to this using our 6 step process _______ instead of the traditional adversarial __________.
Genius idea. We can target engaged couples and offer to pay for their divorce and wedding as package deal.
We could be profitable charging $1,800 if this service costs $6,000. Here some quick math:
70% of first marriages will end in divorce so we wont have to pay anything.
The other 30% will average 8 years before we have to pay. If we invest the float at 10% we can double our money by the time they divorce.
Total cost: $900/marriage
Best part is, when they come to us to cash in we sell each of them a new wedding/divorce package.
For a scientific study you are absolutely correct, however, this is a business and in business you only deal with the self-selecting group that would use your service. The better question would be what percentage of the market would actually use this service, especially knowing that it has and over 99% success rate. In my experience women often want a fast divorce and men want a cheap one so if she can provide that she has a winning business proposition.
It's called Fost-adopt in our state. When a child is taken from a home they have to put them somewhere. If you let them know you want to adopt then they will give you children with a very high chance of never being able to return to the parents. Instead of paying for adoption you get paid. Up to about $1,500/mo pre-adoption.
Not only did he get to use his domain knowledge, Vestas let him use their facilities and gave him all the consumables. No wonder they are the world leader.