.webp)
Think You Can Invest
Like The Best? Prove it.
DealDeck is a fantasy drafting game for YC Demo Day. Pick companies, allocate capital, and earn points as they grow. The best portfolio wins.
Free to play · ~150 YC companies · One shot to prove your instincts
Fantasy sports, but for startups.
You get a budget. You pick YC companies and decide how much to bet on each one. When those companies hire, ship, or raise money, you earn points — multiplied by how much capital you allocated. The person with the best portfolio at the end of the season wins.
Join Season 1 →How the Draft Works
Four steps between you and a portfolio of YC's Spring 2026 batch.
Browse the Batch
Research every company in the YC Spring 2026 cohort. Read what they're building, check the team, look at the sector.
Draft Your Portfolio
You start with a fixed budget. Pick up to 12 companies from at least 3 sectors. Some cost more based on pre-demo day traction.
Allocate Capital
Decide how much to put behind each pick. Higher allocation = bigger multiplier on every point that company earns.
Watch the Scoreboard
Points roll in from hires, funding rounds, HN launches, and team growth. Check the leaderboard to see where you rank.
What Earns Points
Real signals from real companies. No fake data, no simulations.
Funding Raised
If a company closes a round, you earn points based on amount raised and who led it. A $5M seed from Sequoia scores higher than the same round from an unknown syndicate.
| Investor Tier | Examples | Points |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1: Blue Chips | Sequoia, a16z, Benchmark, Founders Fund | +1,000 |
| Tier 2: Powerhouses | Kleiner Perkins, Bessemer, Lightspeed | +500 |
| Tier 3: Specialists | Lux Capital, Thrive, First Round | +250 |
| Tier 4: The Crowd | Regional funds, corporate VCs, seed funds | +100 |
Hiring Velocity
Companies adding engineers and executives are building something. Points scale with team growth milestones — crossing 5 employees is worth something, crossing 10 is worth more, and a C-suite hire is the biggest signal of all.
Community Traction
Hacker News upvotes on launch posts. Product Hunt rankings. GitHub stars. These are free, public, and hard to fake. If the developer community notices your company, you get rewarded.
The Contrarian Multiplier — 1.2x
Own a company that less than 10% of other players drafted? You earn a 1.2x bonus on all points from that pick. Herd behavior gets penalized. Independent research pays off.
Why This Exists
Most people who want to work in venture capital have zero way to prove they can spot winners. You can't paper trade startups. There's no track record you can point to in an interview or show your friends.
DealDeck gives you one. Pick companies before demo day. Put a number on your conviction. Then watch what actually happens over the next few months. Your portfolio is public, your score is public, and the leaderboard doesn't care about your resume.
Season 1 runs alongside the YC Spring 2026 batch. 150+ companies. Real signals. If you think you can spot the next breakout YC company, here's where you prove it.
Sign Up for the Draft →Scout the Batch
These are real companies from YC Spring 2026. Research them before the draft opens.
End Close
AI-powered reconciliation platform using unsupervised ML and vector-space transaction matching for high-volume payments companies.
Taiga
Automates medical billing for doctor's offices. Upload visit data, AI codes it, checks for errors, submits to insurance.
Serafis
Building super-intelligence for financial markets. Mining petabytes of unstructured data to identify narrative inflections before consensus.
Light Anchor
AI-run consumer brands that operate at the speed of compute. Operations run end-to-end by AI agents, capped by compute, not headcount.
Hedge
AI-native specialty insurance company. Helps brokers find faster, cheaper coverage for customers using automated underwriting.
Reducto
Agentic document platform for enterprise AI teams automating document workflows at scale. Trusted by Harvey, Scale AI, and Vanta.
The Fine Print
When does the draft open?
How long is a season?
Is DealDeck free to play?
Do I need to know about startups?
What is YC Demo Day?
How many people can play?
What do I win?
How does scoring work?
Can I play with friends?
Where does the company data come from?
Season 1. June 16th.
150 companies. Your call.
Sign up in under a minute. We'll email you when the draft window opens.
We'll use this to create your player profile and send draft notifications.
School emails unlock school leaderboards.
Helps us place you on the right leaderboards and tailor your experience.
Powers school vs school and firm vs firm rankings.
More players = better leaderboards. We'll send them one invite email, nothing more.
You're in.
We'll email you before the draft opens on June 16th. In the meantime, start scouting.
Browse YC Spring 2026 Companies →The YC Spring 2026 company directory is already live. Do your research now.