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Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator
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Re: Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator
#42It seems the first few batches of YC were VERY successful. But, the number of successful YC companies I can think of from the last 10 years of batches is very minimal despite them investing in thousands of companies. Makes you wonder, does the funding landscape need a new YC level disruption because YC seems to have peeked, return wise (not hype wise). Maybe AI might be their saving grace if everything works out
Companies take time to become successful, so the verdict is still out on most of the companies that started in the last 10 years. Time will tell. Though there are already quite a few successrul YC companies from the last few years. Full list of top YC companies: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies (filter by "top companies")
I believe median time to unicorn status is now about 7 years, so this is not as uncertain as you think. In other words, 50% of YC's 7-year old unicorns have already showed up. The number is higher for older companies.
Re: Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator
#43Happy birthday YC! YC has created a ton of value, and I can say is responsible for the major inflection point in my career. I'm forever grateful to Paul, Jessica, Robert, and Trevor for seeing the value in the reddit team before anyone else did.
Incidentally, reddit turns 20 in just a few weeks (if you count from incorporation :) )
Re: Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are many factors (YC needs to allocate more capital, not founder-led anymore, needs to fill more batches...) etc. But another one is that the first batch has had 20 years to grow and compound while the rest has had less time to become massive. I'm not saying YC is perfect now (though it's still great). But I think a simple factor could just be time for many portcos.
Or that most of the largest opportunities have been filled and newer companies are aiming at much smaller niches, or to be alternatives to well-established competitors.
Also, in 2005 there wasn't that much of an acquisition ecosystem. I feel like fewer founders back then actually thought about getting acquired and instead shot for building big companies.
You had to go big or your thing would fail, whereas nowadays you can fill a tiny niche and get rich by being acquired by the incumbent you're a complement to.
The era of "any promising startup gets swallowed by big tech" seems over with antitrust, but M&A is still happening.
Re: Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator
#45https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1 is always fun to look at, 18.5 years ago.
Fun there's enough posts in HN you could type your DOB (no leading zero) and find a submission for it:
Re: Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator
#46"Founders at Work", written by Jessica is what got me into HN (and I was an initial lurker for quite sometime).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founders_at_Work
Note: YC didn't have HN to begin with, it was launched 1-year later (Oct 2006 as seen by pg profile). And the book was launched the subsequent year (2007).
Re: Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might find this blogpost eye opening: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/pulling-back-the-curtain-...
Wow, there's so few solo founders, and so few non-US companies. I bet nowadays, there's very few non-AI companies. So if you aren't a US-based AI-startup with multiple founders, perhaps ycombinator is not for you.
These are two well-known biases of YC. I believe the reasons are the following:
* YC founders are usually very young, and young people can be capricious. They don't want a solo founder just deciding to do something without a second founder having some leverage to protect YC.
* YC is in the US and has a very pro-US perspective, so they invest in what they know and like.
Re: Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator
#48On Twitter, with all that's going on?
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Re: Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator
#49https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1 is always fun to look at, 18.5 years ago.
1 indexed?
Edit: HN is apparently written in Arc, a dialect of Lisp.
Re: Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator
#50There's going to be a lot of "the big successes already happened" type comments about YC but I think they're wrong.
Sure all big successes are unique in time, and entrepreneurship & web tech are mainstream now. But there's still lots of industries to disrupt. What gets harder is that the level of expertise needed to disrupt an industry is now much higher. You didn't need to work in hotels to create Airbnb, or a bank to create Stripe, or deliveries to do Doordash, etc. A bunch of scrappy web founders that were hosts, or trying to sell on the internet was expert enough to get started. This may be changing in important ways, but huge successes will surely happen.