4 ms·

How much larger can Y Combinator get? 36 start ups is already a huge number.

pg 16y ago
I don't know. One of our general principles with YC is to apply software techniques to startup funding. So we approach scaling YC the way you'd approach scaling software: we scale up till we hit a bottleneck, then we remove that bottleneck and keep going. Funding 36 startups at a time would have seemed impossible back when we were doing 8. And in fact it would have been impossible to do 36 the way we operated then. So how many will we be able to fund at once, after we've taken advantage of whatever new techniques we discover for scaling? We can't say, because we haven't discovered them yet.
- davidw 16y ago
  I'm curious whether, and how, you're going to start pulling in alumni to scale it up, and how that will turn out.
  - pg 16y ago
    Yes, in several ways. We hired Harj and Alexis, who are alums. We have some of the alumni read the applications, in case we overlook any good ones. And the alumni who come in to give advice about funding are fabulous.
    - davidw 16y ago
      In order to be self-replicating, you'd have to have alumni with relatively large exits who then participate on more or less equal terms... is that something you foresee, or is it going to just be too messy to add people that way?
      - pg 16y ago
        I haven't thought too much about it. I usually focus on the bottleneck immediately in front of us. But what we do is pretty parallelizable.
        SkyMarshal 16y ago
        Maybe an eventual next step is creating a YCombinator for YCombinators - a program to help your successful alumni do what you did and become successful incubators/angels/VCs, while keeping them under the overall YC umbrella.
        pg 16y ago
        I don't think you need multiple YCs though. All our experience so far suggests it's better to have one big YC. Maybe there's some limit to scale, but the optimistic hacker in me would rather prove that by hitting it than assume it's there.

pg 16y ago

I don't know. One of our general principles with YC is to apply software techniques to startup funding. So we approach scaling YC the way you'd approach scaling software: we scale up till we hit a bottleneck, then we remove that bottleneck and keep going. Funding 36 startups at a time would have seemed impossible back when we were doing 8. And in fact it would have been impossible to do 36 the way we operated then. So how many will we be able to fund at once, after we've taken advantage of whatever new techniques we discover for scaling? We can't say, because we haven't discovered them yet.

davidw 16y ago
I'm curious whether, and how, you're going to start pulling in alumni to scale it up, and how that will turn out.
- pg 16y ago
  Yes, in several ways. We hired Harj and Alexis, who are alums. We have some of the alumni read the applications, in case we overlook any good ones. And the alumni who come in to give advice about funding are fabulous.
  - davidw 16y ago
    In order to be self-replicating, you'd have to have alumni with relatively large exits who then participate on more or less equal terms... is that something you foresee, or is it going to just be too messy to add people that way?
    - pg 16y ago
      I haven't thought too much about it. I usually focus on the bottleneck immediately in front of us. But what we do is pretty parallelizable.
      - SkyMarshal 16y ago
        Maybe an eventual next step is creating a YCombinator for YCombinators - a program to help your successful alumni do what you did and become successful incubators/angels/VCs, while keeping them under the overall YC umbrella.
        pg 16y ago
        I don't think you need multiple YCs though. All our experience so far suggests it's better to have one big YC. Maybe there's some limit to scale, but the optimistic hacker in me would rather prove that by hitting it than assume it's there.