Fantasy YCSpring 2026 · LiveThree layers.
One final number.
Brackets score after Demo Day. Here's how a single pick becomes points.
The tier you placed the company in. After Demo Day, the company lands in one of these five tiers, and your score depends on how close you were.
- You called it+10UnicornExact tier
- Adjacent tier, partial credit+3Rocket ShipOff by one
- No credit, no penalty0WorkhorseOff by two
- Confidently wrong−2SleeperOff by three
- Confidently wrong−2CookedOff by four
Close isn't wrong. Three or more tiers off is a small penalty, enough that a thoughtful bracket clearly beats random guessing.
Base points reward how close you got.
Tiers are ordered: Unicorn → Rocket Ship → Workhorse → Sleeper → Cooked. Your pick's base score is set by the distance between where you put a company and where it actually landed.
Close isn't wrong. The negative score on distance-3+ is intentional: random guessing on a five-tier ladder produces a lot of distance-3+ picks, so a small penalty makes a thoughtful bracket clearly beat a random one.
+25 for calling a Unicorn.
Breakout is the smallest tier (~7% of a batch, eight of 114 in Spring 2026), and the highest-information call. Getting it right means identifying a future top-decile company from a 100+ company pool.
2× when the crowd faded it.
If fewer than 20% of submitted brackets put a company in Unicorn or Rocket Ship, but you did, and the pick lands, everything doubles. Three conditions, all must hold:
- 01You placed the company in Unicorn or Rocket Ship.
- 02A consensus snapshot exists for this company at scoring time.
- 03The combined Unicorn-or-Rocket-Ship share is < 20% (strict).
The multiplier applies to base + Breakout-bonus, including when the base is negative. A confidently-wrong contrarian call scores −4, not −2. By design: conviction cuts both ways.
The tier a company lands in comes from its outcome.
After Demo Day, every company gets a final valuation that decides its actual tier. Acquisitions, IPOs, and shutdowns all flow through the same number, with one exception.
- ActiveLatest post-money valuationSorted normallySorted normally
- AcquiredAcquisition price (cash + stock at close)Sorted normally. An exit is what the buyer paid.Sorted normally. An exit is what the buyer paid.
- IPOPublic market cap at the scoring-run timestampSorted normally. The market sets the number.Sorted normally. The market sets the number.
- ShutdownOverrides any prior valuationForced into the bottom tierForced into the bottom tier
- Unknown / no newsNo valuation recordedSorts to the end → bottom tier tailSorts to the end → bottom tier tail
- Exits aren't bonuses. A $200M acquisition and a $200M Series C are the same number. No multiplier delta.
- Shutdowns are a forced bottom-tier. A dead company overrides any prior valuation. Putting one in Unicorn is a distance-4 miss.
- Acquihires are operator judgment. When a sale price is clearly stealth-failure (well below last post-money), the operator may flag it as a shutdown instead.
- IPOs use the market cap at scoring time. Not IPO day. Reduces sensitivity to lockup mechanics and first-day pops.
Today, the operator folds exit prices into the company's valuation manually before scoring runs. The status-aware engine ships in a follow-up phase. This page documents the policy that engine will enforce.
Sample Co: the math.
AI / Enterprise
- Placed inUnicorn
- Actual tierUnicorn· exact hit
- Exact tier+10+10 for nailing the tier
- Breakout bonus+25+25 for calling a Unicorn
- Sleeper2×2× because the crowd faded this one
- Final+70points
The floor and the ceiling.
(10 + 25) × 2. A Breakout call that hit, on a contrarian sleeper pick.
−2 × 2. A contrarian Breakout/Rocket Ship pick that landed three or more tiers away.
The full table.
| Outcome | Points | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Exact tier | +10 | You called the tier exactly |
| Off by 1 tier | +3 | Adjacent tier, partial credit |
| Off by 2 tiers | 0 | No credit, no penalty |
| Off by 3+ tiers | −2 | Confidently wrong |
| Unicorn bonus | +25 | Correctly called a Unicorn |
| Sleeper multiplier | 2× | <20% consensus pick that lands Unicorn/Rocket Ship |
| Acquisition | sale price | Used as the valuation for tier sorting |
| IPO | market cap | Public market cap at scoring run |
| Shutdown | forced | Lands in the bottom tier regardless |