51–60 of 148 posts
As a clarification, by 'shutdown' do you mean failed, or does that include people who sold or were aquihired? Good to see the 90% of startups fail 'statistic' blown out the water with some facts!
> Good to see the 90% of startups fail 'statistic' blown out the water with some facts! If YC companies were representative of all startups there wouldn't be any point in going through YC.
Since applications are opening tomorrow, it would be interesting to have a breakdown of interviews/acceptances based on various criteria: sole founder, has revenue, has user, etc... It would allow prospective applicants to think about whether to apply, and hopefully keep the pile a manageable size for the people reading it.
Might be interesting, but the odds are the wrong way to think about this. Our wins come from the margins and we're looking for people to beat the odds. Most of the time we are surprised what ends up becoming big. The numbers reveal that it's hard, but startups were ALWAYS hard. It's still the hardest thing I've ever done and most founders say the same. As far as YC is concerned, we don't want people to try to make th…
Sam also just tweeted that 300 YC companies are no longer around. Amazing how much transparent they are and how great YC is at picking and training. So many really crazy ideas that most would think are insane and YC is able to find the ones that make sense and help them. Seems like that's a bit less than 1/3 of all YC companies Tweet is here: https://twitter.com/sama/status/636586179970752512
Though you do have a point; I would expect a higher failure rate from an accelerator given that they fund riskier ventures.
As a clarification, by 'shutdown' do you mean failed, or does that include people who sold or were aquihired? Good to see the 90% of startups fail 'statistic' blown out the water with some facts!
how good or bad are those numbers? only 8/970 companies are worth > 1b and 40 are worth over 100M. I assume YC is doing great for themselves, so I'm wondering, what is the rule of thumb to say an investment was successful? (for YC, knowing they invest cheap and early.) Is it once a company reaches 10M? 1M? Where there is an exit? It would be interesting to know how many companies YC says the investment was a success…
>8/970 companies are worth > 1b and 40 are worth over 100M. Sorry to be negative, but worth according to whom? If none of these companies are public, the valuation comes from a very narrow group of private investors. In what seems to be a bubble (and an echo chamber) in S.V., these valuations may be vastly overstated. That said, kudos to YC for being transparent.
Do you not think that solid data such as revenue, revenue growth and profit/loss (or at least burn rate) would be a much better measure of success? Some non-public companies (like Uber) publish some of these numbers.
It still won't be 90% though, but YC companies are widely known to not be representative. It's the highest profile accelerator, so it attracts the best talent. Just like people who graduate from Ivy League schools earn more on average, but mostly that's because they attract people who are above average to begin with.
Ok, so I did some quick numbers on performance. It looks like the first batch was in 2005, meaning ycombinator has been at this for 10 years. Have they always funded with 120k? Assuming that (and not present valuing the older money): Total Investment: ~$131,600,000 Total Companies Value: >$65,000,000,000 YCombinator's 7% Value: $4,550,000,000 Total Return: 3357% Annualized Return: 42.5% Obviously, it costs more than…
https://blog.ycombinator.com/the-new-deal
From 2012-2014, YC companies received an automatic $85K follow-on investment from a syndicate of investors, though this was not funded by YC. From 2011-2012, they received an automatic $150K from Yuri Milner. From 2005-2011, it was $6K/founder (I think very early on, it was a flat $20K). So YC's capital expended has been a lot less over time than the current deal would reflect.
Ok, so I did some quick numbers on performance. It looks like the first batch was in 2005, meaning ycombinator has been at this for 10 years. Have they always funded with 120k? Assuming that (and not present valuing the older money): Total Investment: ~$131,600,000 Total Companies Value: >$65,000,000,000 YCombinator's 7% Value: $4,550,000,000 Total Return: 3357% Annualized Return: 42.5% Obviously, it costs more than…
YC recently (1-2 years ago?) started giving 120k. Before that, it was 10-20k. So let's say half of what you said is the total investment = 65M.
That's a 10X return. I actually was expecting higher. Am I missing something in my numbers?
how good or bad are those numbers? only 8/970 companies are worth > 1b and 40 are worth over 100M. I assume YC is doing great for themselves, so I'm wondering, what is the rule of thumb to say an investment was successful? (for YC, knowing they invest cheap and early.) Is it once a company reaches 10M? 1M? Where there is an exit? It would be interesting to know how many companies YC says the investment was a success…
>8/970 companies are worth > 1b and 40 are worth over 100M. Sorry to be negative, but worth according to whom? If none of these companies are public, the valuation comes from a very narrow group of private investors. In what seems to be a bubble (and an echo chamber) in S.V., these valuations may be vastly overstated. That said, kudos to YC for being transparent.