81–90 of 148 posts
Interesting to hear that eight YC companies are worth over $1b. I count Airbnb, Dropbox, Stripe, and Twitch for sure, and probably Weebly makes five. Any thoughts on what the others are?
+probably coinbase
Also pretty incredible that they're over 100 in this last batch.
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
YC filters applicants for dedicated founders who will not give up easily. It is amazing what can be accomplished by manic perseverance.
Well, they try to filter by that quality, as would any other incubator or investor. It would make no sense to accept apathetic founders who will surrender at the first obstacle. Personally, I'm skeptical that they having any advantage in identifying such abstract traits. How would you identify it from a 15 minute interview?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So in your mind the only reason one should use accurate language would be to avoid the risk of civil or criminal litigation? Fascinating.
why is market cap not accurate language? Even private companies have market caps. These market caps are set in the private markets. Market cap = # of shares outstanding * price of each share. Applies to both private and public companies
There's a reason Sam updated the language in his post...
Stark 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.
What does it mean by saying "got their start with us"? I believe many companies have been around for awhile before YC. Many already with revenue, traction and funds raised (although this might be the exception to the rule?).
Like kevin said elsewhere in the thread, it's about finding the amazing founders in the margins -- we want to see everything, and YC can still be a good fit for everyone.
Which companies are the 8 that are worth >= $1 billion?
Edit: oops, that's 8 without Quora & Mixpanel. Machine Zone was surprising. Hadn't even heard of it.
Also, please do not take this as encouragement to start an accelerator. Accelerators on the whole are a terrible business, and we try to be up front about that with everyone who comes to us for advice.
Is it YC's human resources, position in the market, branding, some combination?
Interesting twitter update by sama > Oh, another important stat: about 300 of the companies we have funded have shut down. This is a hard gig. Even after you get into the top accelerator in silicon valley.
At a certain point you can only learn so much from other's failures but it would be interesting non-the-less.