YC Stats

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&#x27;s a bit less than 1&#x2F;3 of all YC companies<p>Tweet is here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;sama&#x2F;status&#x2F;636586179970752512" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;sama&#x2F;status&#x2F;636586179970752512</a>

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.<p>For a bit more, dropbox &amp; AirBnb are worth 10 &amp; 25 billion. That&#x27;s over half the total $65bn from 2&#x2F;940 companies, 0.21%. Even if we assume these stats grossly underestimate ultimate valuations because of most of the companies are still young, it&#x27;s still likely to end at &gt;50% of value from &lt;1% individuals. This is for companies that get into YC, which is already a select group.

Also, please do not take this as encouragement to start an accelerator.<p>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.

<i>&gt;This includes Twitch, which Amazon bought for ~970MM plus an earn-out.</i><p>These kinds of companies with massive bandwidth costs rarely become profitable, and even if Twitch bucks the trend, Amazon could easily use Hollywood accounting to avoid any payments on the earn-out (for example, it could charge Twitch retail rates for use of AWS services). It strikes me as a bad decision to accept an earn-out when the overwhelming likelihood is that the clause will result in exactly $0 going to the former owners.<p>Re: stats, 40 out of 940 are worth more than $100M. Dozens more are probably worth at least $25M. That is an insanely high success rate. The YC system works!

Interesting way to bury the lede that 32 companies received a Fellowship offer. The estimate was 20. (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;07&#x2F;20&#x2F;y-combinator-just-introduced-a-new-program-to-reach-up-to-1000-companies-per-year&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;07&#x2F;20&#x2F;y-combinator-just-introduce...</a>)

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):<p>Total Investment: ~$131,600,000 Total Companies Value: &gt;$65,000,000,000 YCombinator&#x27;s 7% Value: $4,550,000,000 Total Return: 3357% Annualized Return: 42.5%<p>Obviously, it costs more than the initial investment, but these are really nice numbers if compared to a mutual fund, etc. Did I make any mistaken assumptions?

I think there&#x27;s a big elephant in the room here. Companies usually take time to fail, especially with VC funding. The companies from the newer batches are going to be skewing those fail statistics. If you only look at companies from 4 years ago and older, you might get a more realistic impression.<p>It still won&#x27;t be 90% though, but YC companies are widely known to not be representative. It&#x27;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&#x27;s because they attract people who are above average to begin with.

(Since no one is pointing out Elephant in the room, I will do that).<p>YC has been around for 10 years. Average age of a company from First Investment to IPO in 2014 is less than 10 years (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;lifescivc.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2015&#x2F;02&#x2F;Time-From-VC-Investment-to-IPO_Feb2015.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;lifescivc.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2015&#x2F;02&#x2F;Time-From-VC...</a> Source 1.)<p>Personally, I believe startups excel when odds were stacks against us (forced to innovate and make founders strong and tested). I think YC or any incubator has a structure that shields companies from facing challenges initially.<p>I don&#x27;t think Incubators are proven to be a great Idea yet ( if you are someone with industry experience rather than a fresh graduate).<p>1. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.forbes.com&#x2F;sites&#x2F;brucebooth&#x2F;2015&#x2F;02&#x2F;24&#x2F;tortoise-hare-revisited-time-to-ipo-for-vc-backed-startups&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.forbes.com&#x2F;sites&#x2F;brucebooth&#x2F;2015&#x2F;02&#x2F;24&#x2F;tortoise-h...</a>

Considering there is probably a vintage effect, and currently 5% of YC companies are worth over $100 million, that means that most likely 5-10% of founders that join YC will become millionaires over time. That&#x27;s pretty impressive.

Since applications are opening tomorrow, it would be interesting to have a breakdown of interviews&#x2F;acceptances based on various criteria: sole founder, has revenue, has user, etc...<p>It would allow prospective applicants to think about whether to apply, and hopefully keep the pile a manageable size for the people reading it.

Interesting twitter update by sama<p>&gt; Oh, another important stat: about 300 of the companies we have funded have shut down.<p>This is a hard gig. Even after you get into the top accelerator in silicon valley.

<i>Number of companies funded by YC that have shut down: ~300</i><p>Does this include aqui-hires?<p>Also, would you know how many companies rejected by YC are worth more than $1 billion? Zero or non-zero? :)

how good or bad are those numbers? only 8&#x2F;970 companies are worth &gt; 1b and 40 are worth over 100M.<p>I assume YC is doing great for themselves, so I&#x27;m wondering, what is the rule of thumb to say an investment was successful? (for YC, knowing they invest cheap and early.)<p>Is it once a company reaches 10M? 1M? Where there is an exit?<p>It would be interesting to know how many companies YC says the investment was a success (either made money or will if no exit yet).

I would be very interested in seeing a cohort analysis of YC company valuations by batch :-)

<p><pre><code> Number of companies we offered to fund yesterday for the first YC Fellowship: 32 </code></pre> That&#x27;s a figure I was looking for (took the interview yesterday, didn&#x27;t get in).

Nice to see more detailed stats on this stuff. One figure I&#x27;d really like to see is the number of companies worth more than $10M &amp; $50M.

It would be great to get stats about exits as well. How many exits? Total valuation at exit? Median&#x2F;average age at exit? etc.

Thanks for publishing these! They&#x27;re pretty interesting and they certainly paint YCombinator in a really positive light. It would be pretty awesome to see a roll up regarding the failed companies and aggregated reasons why they failed.<p>At a certain point you can only learn so much from other&#x27;s failures but it would be interesting non-the-less.

It takes a long time to build a Unicorn...<p>airbnb dropbox stripe twitch weebly machinezone were all funded &gt;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.

What does it mean by saying &quot;got their start with us&quot;? 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?).

As a clarification, by &#x27;shutdown&#x27; do you mean failed, or does that include people who sold or were aquihired?<p>Good to see the 90% of startups fail &#x27;statistic&#x27; blown out the water with some facts!

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?

I keep reading that seed investment firms consider it &quot;good&quot; if 4 out of every 10 startups they fund turn out to be something of value. Over time this is showing to be true.

These stats are great, or at least they sound great to an aspiring entrepreneur. I&#x27;ve seen stuff like this for a long time on HN, and a feeling took hold in me that I&#x27;ve only started to really shake recently, a feeling that the best and most determined founders will always get into YC, and that failing to get into (or apply to) YC is an indication of weakness.<p>But just remember that, even though these numbers look amazing, you can create a business via other means and still possibly achieve whatever sort of success you&#x27;re after -- you don&#x27;t <i>have</i> to join an accelerator, or get prestigious seed or venture funding.<p>Or at least, I think that you shouldn&#x27;t have to.

Does anyone know where one could find (if YC&#x27;s published the stat) of the median&#x2F;average age for the founders of the companies worth &gt; $1 billion and $100 million?

Which companies are the 8 that are worth &gt;= $1 billion?

<i>Number of hardware + biotech + healthcare companies in the last batch: 32</i><p>Coolios.<p>I take it YC has some initiative wrt biotech and healthcare and I missed it (cuz I am busy)?

Wow, 300 shutdowns. Does that include &quot;acqui-hires&quot;?<p>Also pretty incredible that they&#x27;re over 100 in this last batch.

another stat from sama on twitter:<p>&gt; Oh, another important stat: about 300 of the companies we have funded have shut down.

Is there a calculation for REAL ROI?<p>Not based on current valuation but based on actual exits and money returned to YC?

see also: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;yclist.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;yclist.com</a>

How many founders have gone through YC?

&gt; Number of companies in the last batch: 107<p>Wow.<p>Just wow.

Over 900 companies, and all we&#x27;re getting are 10 numbers? Am I missing something?

&quot;Market cap&quot; is a poorly-chosen descriptor because the vast majority (all?) of the companies in YC&#x27;s portfolio are private.<p>The use of the term &quot;market cap&quot; is especially ironic given Sam&#x27;s recent post on &quot;financial misstatements&quot;[1]. If founders are expected to use financial terms accurately and appropriately, shouldn&#x27;t investors be expected to do the same?<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.samaltman.com&#x2F;financial-misstatements" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.samaltman.com&#x2F;financial-misstatements</a>