Scrolling through this quickly, I notice that I have not heard of a single one of these companies.
I’m not sure I can assign any meaning to that. Just my immediate observation.
YC Graveyard: 821 inactive Y Combinator startups
101–110 of 238 posts
Re: YC Graveyard: 821 inactive Y Combinator startups
#102821 out of how many in total?
Re: YC Graveyard: 821 inactive Y Combinator startups
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure it is. If your business nets 3 million a year, it takes 5 people to run it, and your customer base is steady, that's lifestyle. Sucks for investors, pretty nice for you if you can keep it running.
In other sectors that's just called a "small business" and celebrated as the fullest expression of the American dream. I've always found it funny that tech treats the idea of a going concern with such distaste.
I know a guy who sells kitchens for a living and makes around $2-3 million per year with a profit margin of 60% or so.
But he didn’t spend 10s of million dollars to get there.
Re: YC Graveyard: 821 inactive Y Combinator startups
#104Since 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.
There's not really such a thing as a concrete "date of death" in many cases, and very rarely will there be a public one -- I'm familiar with a few names on this list that never actually made a formal public announcement and kept the website running for months to well over a year after everyone was laid off The methodology of the aggregator might have been as simple as "ping every YC company's listed website, check th…
The methodology is just this list filtered for companies tagged "Inactive": https://www.ycombinator.com/companies
Re: YC Graveyard: 821 inactive Y Combinator startups
#105Is YC better than other incubators, percentage wise?
I would imagine so. a) Almost all of the other incubators are just awful. Either they are predatory, ineptly managed or simply not well capitalised enough to offer a competitive product. b) YC is able to rest on its laurels i.e. they can/do market how well AirBnb, Stripe etc have done. And so their funnel of talent is by far the best. c) That said, YC is the worst I've ever seen it. And Garry Tan is mostly to blame a…
Worst based on what, exactly?
Re: YC Graveyard: 821 inactive Y Combinator startups
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know some (YC and others) who float around doing nothing on $200k a year in salary because no investor cares enough, or has the legal right, to get their money back. Not sure what their long-term game plan is. The others end up at another Series B+ startup or go to a MANGA company if they can grind leetcode for a bit and get an interview.
They pay themselves 200k/y in a pre-market fit startup? That's insane and I guess on the investors for going over the traditional preseed amounts. Or do you mean that they're zombie startups that make enough to pay the founder 200k/year?
Depends on your money raised and your leverage. YC companies are typically top tier founders with tons of leverage and capital options.
Re: YC Graveyard: 821 inactive Y Combinator startups
#107this is not actually an accurate list
Re: YC Graveyard: 821 inactive Y Combinator startups
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
In other sectors that's just called a "small business" and celebrated as the fullest expression of the American dream. I've always found it funny that tech treats the idea of a going concern with such distaste.
While I do agree with you, if it took tens of millions of dollars in initial capital to get there, which hasn’t been returned, it’s quite a different thing to the standard small businesses model.
So ... is a restaurant considered a small business? Where do you draw the line on initial investment?
Re: YC Graveyard: 821 inactive Y Combinator startups
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought that was called sustainable.
Is it sustainable, if it took millions to bootstrap? I mean I guess if it can just keep running, but the investors might not agree if they need to wait 15 years to make their money back.
What choice do they have? If they shot the enterprise down, they got nothing.
Re: YC Graveyard: 821 inactive Y Combinator startups
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure it is. If your business nets 3 million a year, it takes 5 people to run it, and your customer base is steady, that's lifestyle. Sucks for investors, pretty nice for you if you can keep it running.
In other sectors that's just called a "small business" and celebrated as the fullest expression of the American dream. I've always found it funny that tech treats the idea of a going concern with such distaste.
When you see how VC-funded AI startups market their products ("eliminate artists/editors/paralegals"), it's not surprising that they wouldn't be happy with dividends from a profitable business that employs people. Better to throw the money into a "moonshot" company that perennially loses money until BigCo buys them out to acquire their IP and fire everybody.