Y Combinator, Silicon Valley's iconic accelerator, will have startups pitch in prerecorded videos for its upcoming Demo Day due to the coronavirus

• Y Combinator, the startup accelerator founded by legendary tech titan Paul Graham and responsible for mega-hits like Airbnb and Brex, officially called off its twice-annual pitch competition in San Francisco amid growing concern around COVID-19.
• The decision, announced Friday, comes on the heels of several tech office closures around San Francisco and the Bay Area since Monday. Two cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in San Francisco.
• The pitch competition will instead be held virtually, a Y Combinator spokeswoman said. One founder told Business Insider that investors had already begun requesting virtual meetings in light of travel restrictions announced in February.
• Demo Day has come under fire in recent years for adding too many startups to its cohorts, and recently added a second day of pitches to accommodate the growing number of startups that needed to present.
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Y Combinator's Demo Day is part of Silicon Valley lore. The twice-annual startup pitch competition rivals suburban garages and nondescript hoodies as an icon of Silicon Valley startup scene. But on Friday, it became yet another tech conference in the expanding list that has cancelled amid growing fear of the novel coronavirus.

The startup accelerator, which has produced some of the hottest tech companies in recent memory like Airbnb and Brex, announced on Friday that it was moving its upcoming Demo Day to an entirely virtual experience, a spokesperson told Business Insider. The competition was originally planned to take place March 23 and 24 in San Francisco.

"While we won't be able to recreate every aspect of Demo Day, we'll try our best to create an amazing experience for our founders and investors," the spokesperson said.

The announcement comes on the heels of multiple office closures throughout San Francisco and California's Bay Area since Monday. On Thursday, San Francisco officials confirmed two cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, resulting from community spread and had no connections to countries with widespread outbreaks or any individuals who had been exposed.

Other tech conferences have similarly opted to hold events virtually in light of the growing concerns instead of outright cancelling. For Demo Day, that means the hundreds of founders in the most recent batch still have a shot at securing funding from investors, even if they aren't able to meet in person.

One founder in the current batch of Y Combinator startups told Business Insider that investors had started requesting virtual meetings as early as last week as travel restrictions began expanding throughout the United States. The founder requested anonymity to avoid identifying the investors in question and harming future opportunities with other investors.

"For 15 years, startup investors have supported every new batch of YC companies we know the same will be true for this batch," the spokesperson.

According to Y Combinator, presentations will be pre-recorded and released to all investors on March 23, on the existing Demo Day website. The accelerator will also provide investors with written background for each company and access to the decks. The site currently uses software that allows investors and founders to contact each other remotely, which will allow them to set up virtual meetings as needed.