Over 900 companies, and all we're getting are 10 numbers? Am I missing something?
YC Stats
111–120 of 148 posts
Re: YC Stats
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Because I can guarantee you that the "valuation" of $65B+ is a totally meaningless number. This includes every single company that had a huge, unsustainable up round which will almost certainly be devalued based on future financings or exits. "Meaningless" is hyperbolic. How much would you pay for a share of Airbnb? More than nothing, I assume. I think one can conclude something from consummated, informed responses…
No - I stand by that as a literal use. Does 65B represent the actual money value that people will pay for the shares of 100% of the ~600 currently existing YC companies? Does it tell us the average value? The mean? Standard deviation? Quintile distributions? P/E? Is that number just based on valuations from funding rounds? Projections? It is literally meaningless. It is not verifiable. The standards that are used to…
The problem is using the words "valuation" and "worth" interchangeably. Just because someone pays $50 million for 5% of startup doesn't make it magically worth $1 billion. No one would actually pay anything close to $1 billion for the whole thing, hence it is not worth anything close to $1 billion. That's just the implied valuation.
Re: YC Stats
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Last week I saw this from Sam. > If we don’t invest in these companies, they don’t happen… The thing about Y Combinator that’s cool is that most companies won’t happen if we don’t fund them.[1] I thought YC was always looking to fund those that would exist with or without YC. I have seen less and less "crazy bets" every batch, but I have to say there's more diversity of founders and topics (biotech, energy, farming).…
YC has said that Airbnb would have failed without their help. How could they not update their thinking? Being determined to succeed is necessary but insufficient. Every successful startup received a big helping hand early in its life. YC's business is to provide that opportunity to founders that otherwise wouldn't have it, such as Airbnb, which no other investor would back.
What's more intriguing is how was YC able to see through what the other investors saw as an issue?
Even to this day I'm astonished that AirBnB exists and yet YC was able to see something in them years ago.
Re: YC Stats
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is incredibly off in many ways. Someday we will just release our numbers.
Sorry about all the FUD around YC's success. I'm curious where all this negative sentiment is coming from. Reminds me of this gem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079
Because we expect more from YC. No one doubts that YC has been a hugely positive impact in the startup world. It seems below YC's standard to share selective metrics that might not tell the whole story.
Re: YC Stats
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
No - I stand by that as a literal use. Does 65B represent the actual money value that people will pay for the shares of 100% of the ~600 currently existing YC companies? Does it tell us the average value? The mean? Standard deviation? Quintile distributions? P/E? Is that number just based on valuations from funding rounds? Projections? It is literally meaningless. It is not verifiable. The standards that are used to…
Valuation means the price that investors or acquirers were willing to pay. That someone was willing to pay that is a verifiable fact. What the returns will be is an unknown, of course. But to say that is "meaningless" is either naive or a misuse of the word. Stock prices and market caps are decided the same way.
Public stock prices are decided by supply-demand balance. In no way does this valuation resemble that mechanism.
Re: YC Stats
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
YC has said that Airbnb would have failed without their help. How could they not update their thinking? Being determined to succeed is necessary but insufficient. Every successful startup received a big helping hand early in its life. YC's business is to provide that opportunity to founders that otherwise wouldn't have it, such as Airbnb, which no other investor would back.
What's more intriguing is how was YC able to see through what the other investors saw as an issue? Even to this day I'm astonished that AirBnB exists and yet YC was able to see something in them years ago.
YC also despised the idea, but invested because they liked the founders. But they also presumably liked the 600+ YC founders that failed, so you can see how much investors can really predict.
Re: YC Stats
#117It takes a long time to build a Unicorn...
airbnb dropbox stripe twitch weebly machinezone were all funded >5 years ago... Unicorns in the past 5 years are Instacart and Zenefits (there will surely be others). In general it is hard to measure performance of the entire portfolio, much easier to measure performance of a class.
Re: YC Stats
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Valuation means the price that investors or acquirers were willing to pay. That someone was willing to pay that is a verifiable fact. What the returns will be is an unknown, of course. But to say that is "meaningless" is either naive or a misuse of the word. Stock prices and market caps are decided the same way.
Public stock prices are decided by supply-demand balance. In no way does this valuation resemble that mechanism.
Public stock prices are the last price someone was willing to buy that stock at.
Private stock prices are the last price someone was willing to buy that stock at.
It is slightly less simple, because you may give a discount for advice, but private stock prices are definitely reliant upon supply and demand. If one investor wants to set your valuation at $1B and another at $100m, you go with the one who offered a $1B valuation. There is occasionally a discount for advice/connections, but the mechanism that the highest bidder wins is generally the same. Private market stocks are by no means exempt from economics or supply and demand.
Re: YC Stats
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
No - I stand by that as a literal use. Does 65B represent the actual money value that people will pay for the shares of 100% of the ~600 currently existing YC companies? Does it tell us the average value? The mean? Standard deviation? Quintile distributions? P/E? Is that number just based on valuations from funding rounds? Projections? It is literally meaningless. It is not verifiable. The standards that are used to…
Happy to buy any shares you have in any of the YC unicorns.
Especially for $0
Re: YC Stats
#120Stark reminder of how top heavy returns are. A lot of the talk and criticism about the startup world: valuation, investment, focusing on numbers other than revenue and such is ultimately explainable by going back to this. For a bit more, dropbox & AirBnb are worth 10 & 25 billion. That's over half the total $65bn from 2/940 companies, 0.21%. Even if we assume these stats grossly underestimate ultimate valuations beca…
Remember: until there's an "event", there are no "returns". Until a buyout or an acquisition happens, there's no money made except on paper.
Sure, but I wouldn't mind holding 7% - dilution of Airbnb, Dropbox, Teespring and Zenefits. You can give that to me on paper.