how many YC startups are there? wiki says 4K, so 821/4K = 20%. not too bad. I expected much worse.
Most YC companies are zombies. There are a lot of 3-5 person startups still "active", some of them since a decade ago.
YC Graveyard: 821 inactive Y Combinator startups
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Re: YC Graveyard: 821 inactive Y Combinator startups
#12There was a similar project a few months ago that tracked changes/pivots/shutdowns in startups. It was a very light site, unfortunately I lost the bookmark or forgot to bookmark it. Can anyone help me here?
Re: YC Graveyard: 821 inactive Y Combinator startups
#13Wth. Blume benefits sounds like a really useful thing ? Wonder what happened.
A) If being useful were enough to make a product successful, we'd still have Google Reader B) We have no way of knowing how well Blume's product actually worked C) Health insurance is heavily regulated, which means it's not a great target market for AI
> A) If being useful were enough to make a product successful, we'd still have Google Reader
Yeah bad example, Google Reader was extremely successful, so much so that it’s demise was enough for _many_ companies to be very financially successful by taking Reader’s customers.
Re: YC Graveyard: 821 inactive Y Combinator startups
#14And all inventory of the defunct startups goes here: https://svdisposition.com/auctions
Re: YC Graveyard: 821 inactive Y Combinator startups
#15Wth. Blume benefits sounds like a really useful thing ? Wonder what happened.
Generally the ones that don't sound useful do better. Why Stripe? Why Airbnb? Why Twitter? There's less competition and winner takes all.
How do stripe and Airbnb not sound useful? "Need to get paid" and "find accomodation" are among the oldest business models on the internet.
Re: YC Graveyard: 821 inactive Y Combinator startups
#16I personally know the founders of three YC startups that are functionally dead (raised capital, not developing anything, basically laid off everyone but the founder(s)) but are not on this list. I'd bet it's at least twice that number.
Need to also consider the ones that had a qualified exit event and then the product got axed (e.g. aquihire or just customer acquisition). It’s a very different graveyard but in many cases has similar impact on the non-Founders (especially the IC SWEs).
Re: YC Graveyard: 821 inactive Y Combinator startups
#17Filestack YCS12 is a mistake, it's very active.
Re: YC Graveyard: 821 inactive Y Combinator startups
#18Since you probably already have this information, it would be interesting to have the "death date", with a link to the announcement or however you gathered the information.
Re: YC Graveyard: 821 inactive Y Combinator startups
#19> Better to have launched and lost than never to have launched at all
...yet when Google does this, people are up in arms and insist they should run their products forever, even if they have no product market fit.
Re: YC Graveyard: 821 inactive Y Combinator startups
#20I personally know the founders of three YC startups that are functionally dead (raised capital, not developing anything, basically laid off everyone but the founder(s)) but are not on this list. I'd bet it's at least twice that number.
I'm curious, what do ex-founders generally do after their startup is dead? For me I just got a job after my first few ones died, until I was able to succeed at my current ones, but I'm sure many might just continue working a job indefinitely.