A 'valuation' and a sale are completely different things. Silicon Valley VCs are annoying as all hell. They get lucky once and all of a sudden they're Warren Buffett.
37 YC Companies have valuations of or been sold for at least $40 Million
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Re: 37 YC Companies have valuations of or been sold for at least $40 Million
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
I doubt your info is correct. IIRC, CloudKick had 10 employees and little revenue. $40M seems like a steep price. If Cloudkick's product was generating material revenue, they wouldn't have shut it down recently. My arm chair quaterbacking puts the deal closer to $10M for investors, and maybe a nice bit of earnout.
https://www.quora.com/How-much-was-Cloudkick-acquired-for $30-50mm seems to be the consensus in this and some other places. $30MM cash was in the 10-K filing.
Thanks, you are correct. I pulled the Feb 2011 10k, and it is clear -- $30M cash. No other acquisitions were mentioned, so that must be it. That being said, they show no earnouts for FY 2011 or 2012, but that could be because retention payments just got misclassified as comp. I stand by your >$40M comment as justifiable, likely accurate, and definitely more accurate than my estimation.
From the 10K > During 2010, except for the $50 million repayment of our line of credit and cash paid for an acquisition of $30 million, we were able to maintain a consistent level of cash and cash equivalents while growing our business by maintaining our disciplined use of capital.
Re: 37 YC Companies have valuations of or been sold for at least $40 Million
#23It's really amazing how well YC selects their companies, and how effectively they propel their startups forward. When talking to YC founders, you can just tell that there is something different about them.
Re: 37 YC Companies have valuations of or been sold for at least $40 Million
#24[deleted]
Re: 37 YC Companies have valuations of or been sold for at least $40 Million
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://www.quora.com/How-much-was-Cloudkick-acquired-for $30-50mm seems to be the consensus in this and some other places. $30MM cash was in the 10-K filing.
Thanks, you are correct. I pulled the Feb 2011 10k, and it is clear -- $30M cash. No other acquisitions were mentioned, so that must be it. That being said, they show no earnouts for FY 2011 or 2012, but that could be because retention payments just got misclassified as comp. I stand by your >$40M comment as justifiable, likely accurate, and definitely more accurate than my estimation. From the 10K > During 2010, exc…
I'm not arguing worth, just what they actually paid :) (There is no likely world where what Google paid for Slide was worth it, for instance)
Re: 37 YC Companies have valuations of or been sold for at least $40 Million
#26I'd rather know the sum of the valuations of all 511 companies (with the ones tha closed down valued at zero of course). while I am making wishes, I'd also like to know what percentage of that total valuation is owned by cofounders rather than investors.
The total valuation of those 511 is currently about $11.5 billion. We ourselves don't know the percentage owned by founders. But considering that investors continually complain that YC companies are overpriced, it may be higher than the industry average.
I'm bad at math, anyone know what's 6% of $11.5 billion?
In all seriousness, congratulations pg. You've played your cards very well the past 10 years.
Re: 37 YC Companies have valuations of or been sold for at least $40 Million
#27In academia there's an author metric called the H-index
> A scientist has index h if h of his/her Np papers have at least h citations each, and the other (Np − h) papers have no more than h citations each.
I wonder if you could apply this same methodology to VC (the v-index)
> A VC firm has index v if v of his/her Nc funded companies have had valuations of at least $v million, and the other (Nc − v) funded companies have had valuations of no more than $v million. (In some inflation adjusted dollars.)
$mm 0 0 0 0 5 10 10 15 22
v-index = 5
$mm 2 4 4 5 8 8 8 10 14 17 20 22 25 50 55 60 100 200
v-index = 10
Python snippit for calculation.
def vindex(valuations):
return max(v if sum(x >= v for x in valuations) >= v else 0 for v in range(len(valuations)))Re: 37 YC Companies have valuations of or been sold for at least $40 Million
#28In academia there's an author metric called the H-index > A scientist has index h if h of his/her Np papers have at least h citations each, and the other (Np − h) papers have no more than h citations each. I wonder if you could apply this same methodology to VC (the v-index) > A VC firm has index v if v of his/her Nc funded companies have had valuations of at least $v million, and the other (Nc − v) funded companies…
From another comment:
> pg says in a later tweet reply [1] that it is 37 out of 511.
So ycombinator's v-index is likely 37.
Re: 37 YC Companies have valuations of or been sold for at least $40 Million
#29https://twitter.com/heynavid/status/338813242799431681 @heynavid "@paulg which one was the biggest surprise to you?" @paulg "@heynavid Since I suspect they won't mind me saying so, Rap Genius." @RapGenius "@paulg @heynavid WOOP! I was surprised that PG is tight with NWA, personally.. http://rapgenius.com/Nwa-express-yourself-lyrics#note-318551 "
For anyone curious, the NWA lyrics:
> "Now, getting back to the PG, that's program, and it's easy"
Means "Parental Guidance".
> Unlike most songs on the album and by N.W.A, the song is almost devoid of profanity and violent content.
Re: 37 YC Companies have valuations of or been sold for at least $40 Million
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
The total valuation of those 511 is currently about $11.5 billion. We ourselves don't know the percentage owned by founders. But considering that investors continually complain that YC companies are overpriced, it may be higher than the industry average.
I'm bad at math, anyone know what's 6% of $11.5 billion? In all seriousness, congratulations pg. You've played your cards very well the past 10 years.
After dilution it will be more like 3%.