Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

YCPages - List of Y Combinator companies, founders and jobs with statistics

ycpages.info

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 71 posts

Re: YCPages - List of Y Combinator companies, founders and jobs with statistics

#41

Post by mcdowall »

dreamux wrote: post #5

Other data points that might be interesting if you could track them down: 1. How long it took companies to exit. 2. Financing raised (also against age of the company, so average individual rounds raised and average time between rounds). 3. Running expenses (perhaps broken down: legal, hardware, people, marketing/ads, etc.) 4. Revenue. 5. Userbase growth. Asking a lot, but would be great information to have. :)

With all the contact information available if you really want to know something like this then why not fire off a mail. My perception is that the guys that get funded are usually just decent guys in the most part, sure they wouldn't mind if the information isn't too obtrusive.

Re: YCPages - List of Y Combinator companies, founders and jobs with statistics

#42

Post by aberman »

birken wrote: post #35
SwellJoe wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jessica and pg have both spoken/written at length on the subject. They want to fund female-founded companies, but nearly none apply. I've personally experienced this. I've tried to talk lots of people into applying for YC, or just starting their own company, over the years since we took part in 2007. About 50% of the people I've tried to convince were women. Only men applied or went on to start businesses. Not a sing…

I know of one incredibly talented potential female founder who applied with a killer idea and was rejected. I think it is very likely that YC has a strong bias towards men, which this data certainly supports. I'm also not blaming YC for having a bias towards men. I think silicon valley in general has a bias towards men, and since YC is a for profit business they are making economically sound decisions. However, I thi…

> I know of one incredibly talented potential female founder who applied with a killer idea and was rejected.

I know of dozens of incredibly talented potential male founders who applied with killer ideas and were rejected. Seriously.

> I think it is very likely that YC has a strong bias towards men, which this data certainly supports.

Why do you think it's very likely? What data supports that. As one of the other commentators already pointed out, the percentage of YC founders that are women is about equal to the percentage that apply. Saying that the "data support" the argument that YC is biased when there is such an obvious alternative explanation (namely, that there are less female founders) is disingenuous.

> since YC is a for profit business they are making economically sound decisions.

Wait, what? Are you saying that since Silicon Valley (I'm guessing you mean investors in this context?) favors men, YC intentionally (and consciously) chooses to fund men in order to increase the chances that YC founders raise subsequent rounds of financing? That's crazy talk...

> saying any fault lies with women is really unfair.

I don't think anybody is "faulting" women. They are just stating the facts - there are less female engineers, and less female YC applicants.

Re: YCPages - List of Y Combinator companies, founders and jobs with statistics

#43

Post by melissamiranda »

CloudOps42 wrote: post #4

There's a real problem with the sex distribution numbers. Not saying it's a YC problem, but it is a problem. There're too many talented women out there to lose them to other industries. When we can pull them over here, watch out!

Stanford professor Margaret Neale's research shows that diversity, not just women but simply people of different backgrounds, makes a team perform better. (https://gsbapps.stanford.edu/facultyprofiles/biodetail.asp?i...). So there is evidence that Y Combinator companies would benefit from having more women on board, and not just because the gender ratios look better to the outside world.

I love that Jessica is leading the Female Founders group on Grub With Us (let's have more please!). What other efforts could be undertaken to solve the problem? How about more Grub with us dinners where Y Combinator founders can meet women with Y Combinator potential?

Re: YCPages - List of Y Combinator companies, founders and jobs with statistics

#45

Post by pg »

SwellJoe wrote: post #31
pg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snipshot was W06.

I thought Beau demoed something on demo day with our batch...but I may be misremembering.

You're right, he did. We let him present again at your batch's dday. We do that occasionally with startups that have special circumstances.

Re: YCPages - List of Y Combinator companies, founders and jobs with statistics

#48

Post by SwellJoe »

birken wrote: post #35
SwellJoe wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jessica and pg have both spoken/written at length on the subject. They want to fund female-founded companies, but nearly none apply. I've personally experienced this. I've tried to talk lots of people into applying for YC, or just starting their own company, over the years since we took part in 2007. About 50% of the people I've tried to convince were women. Only men applied or went on to start businesses. Not a sing…

I know of one incredibly talented potential female founder who applied with a killer idea and was rejected. I think it is very likely that YC has a strong bias towards men, which this data certainly supports. I'm also not blaming YC for having a bias towards men. I think silicon valley in general has a bias towards men, and since YC is a for profit business they are making economically sound decisions. However, I thi…

Egads. Do you know how many applications YC gets every batch? The last publicly reported number was something like 400, and that was years ago. I'm sure is dramatically higher than that now. The competition is insanely high, and the vast majority of insanely talented people with killer ideas get rejected.

Also, a "killer idea" isn't what YC looks for. They look for good teams.

I wasn't suggesting that any of the women I suggested should apply to YC would have necessarily gotten in (none of the men I've recommended to YC have, so far). Odds are simply against it, but I think people should do it anyway, if they want to start a company that fits the YC model. My point was that of the people I've encouraged to start businesses, only the men have actually done so. The women always have too many good reasons not to. Their job pays too well, they like the food at Google too much and don't like to cook, they don't want to move away from their friends to live in the valley, they don't want to give up the security they currently enjoy for something uncertain, they don't want to give up their weekends, etc. There's always good reasons to take the safe path...men just seem to be more willing to ignore all those reasons and start a company anyway. Not all men or women fit this description, of course...free will seems to exist, and humans are widely variable. But, it's true enough of the time that I'm absolutely confident YC is not exhibiting a preference for male founders, and that the percentage of accepted female founders is reflective of the percentage of female applicants.

Re: YCPages - List of Y Combinator companies, founders and jobs with statistics

#49

Post by birken »

mbesto wrote: post #38
CloudOps42 wrote: post #4

There's a real problem with the sex distribution numbers. Not saying it's a YC problem, but it is a problem. There're too many talented women out there to lose them to other industries. When we can pull them over here, watch out!

This is like saying there's a real problem with the lack of black coaches in the NFL. So what? May the best people be suited for the job, regardless of race, gender, age, etc. Do I think more women should be involved? Sure, I'm all for equality. But any such effort to detract women from other industries, I think would be better suited by detracting talented people (women and men) from other industries (say like maybe…

This statement basically could not be less accurate. The NFL itself thought there was a huge problem with the lack of black coaches in the NFL, so it took a pro-active approach by making the Rooney Rule (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooney_Rule), in which a minority head coach must be interviewed (not hired), in the case of a head coaching vacancy. And what happened? Well the number of minority coaches role greatly from 2 at the end of the 2002 season to 7 currently.

Basically the NFL front office realized that a lot of the owners had some unconscious bias against minority head coaches, and thus they made a rule which forced them to at least acknowledge there were quality minority coaching candidates out there. And once the owners were forced to confront this, they started to agree and hire minority candidates.

I think there are a lot of parallels between this and the current gender disparity in YC. In order to solve such a systemic problem, you have to take big steps. YC doesn't want to take big steps, and thus the problem wont get solved, and people will continue to muse about how women just aren't trying hard enough. Reminds me of the prevailing wisdom in 2000 when everybody said minority head coaches just didn't have what it took to run an NFL team.

Re: YCPages - List of Y Combinator companies, founders and jobs with statistics

#50

Post by DaniFong »

SwellJoe wrote: post #16
CloudOps42 wrote: post #4

There's a real problem with the sex distribution numbers. Not saying it's a YC problem, but it is a problem. There're too many talented women out there to lose them to other industries. When we can pull them over here, watch out!

Jessica and pg have both spoken/written at length on the subject. They want to fund female-founded companies, but nearly none apply. I've personally experienced this. I've tried to talk lots of people into applying for YC, or just starting their own company, over the years since we took part in 2007. About 50% of the people I've tried to convince were women. Only men applied or went on to start businesses. Not a sing…

It might be the field. In our interviewing process we were blown away by four female engineers, 100% of which decided instead to start their own startup -- in cleantech.
Post reply on HN