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Y Combinator Top Companies List 2019

371 points by andygcook 7y ago

andygcook 7y ago
Question for YC: How does the list rank companies like Zapier that are growing very fast, but haven't raised in years to set a current valuation? I'd imagine that revenue is factored into play but perhaps not shown.
- deleted 7y ago
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- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  Historically, I have found that these questions won’t receive a response from anyone with valuation insight at YC. I’m unsure why work isn’t shown when arriving at valuations you’re publicly communicating (even if only relative through ordering, such as in this case). I’m not asking for an S-1 or pro forma financial statements, broad strokes would be fine. Also, touting how many people your startup employs when it’s in the job destruction business (Cruise and others) seems like an unhelpful metric to put front and center (startups are rarely going to be net job creators, software, automation, all that jazz). Edit: It’s also odd Docker is #18 when they’re likely about to run out of cash. [1] Disclaimer: I own equity in a YC startup, but am not currently employed by any companies in YCs portfolio. [1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/docker-is-in-deep-trouble/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/docker-is-in-deep-trouble/
- austenallred 7y ago
  The list only uses their last valuation, so YC just acknowledges it's not a perfect metric and publishes the list by last valuation.
  - andygcook 7y ago
    That makes sense and thanks for the reply, Austen. Also, congrats on making the Top #100 for Lambda School.
negrit 7y ago
Surprising to not see Zenefits in the list
- e40 7y ago
  Perhaps this is why: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/02/zenefits-fires-nearly-half-its-staff https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/02/zenefits-fires-nearl...
- jordache 7y ago
  lol
- capocannoniere 7y ago
  While I don't know about Zenefits in particular, keep in mind that YC companies can opt out of this list: > One thing to note is that this is not an exhaustive list of the top YC companies. We allowed alumni to opt out of being listed for any reason.
rsp1984 7y ago
The URL for Embark is actually embarktrucks.com, not embark.com
- katm 7y ago
  thanks for catching
shubidubi 7y ago
interesting fact - out of the top 100 companies, (only?) 4 are remote.
- elmar 7y ago
  I know Gitlab, Zapier are remote could you please disclose what are the other two?
  - shubidubi 7y ago
    just look for "remote" on the page. the location for each company is in the last column.
  - jcomis 7y ago
    Mattermost and Sfox
- adpirz 7y ago
  Those 4 may be remote only, but there are many others on there that have remote positions.
  - woadwarrior01 7y ago
    I can confirm that Reddit has remote positions. I work remotely from Ireland, whilst most of my team is in SF.
- marviel 7y ago
  not untrue! Though I would point out that because remote is a "new" style of work, it's probably too early in remote work's history to use this as evidence of remote work's unsuitability in general. This being because there are likely a number of "tricks" to making remote employment work properly that today's remote companies haven't yet mastered, while in contrast physical companies have a significant and long cultural history to pull the best ideas from. TL;DR: yes, but I think remote work is also at Semver 0.X.Y right now so we should give it some time to grow
- 7y ago
screye 7y ago
I am surprised that reddit is on #13. It's alexa rank in US social media websites is #2 behind Facebook. Apart form their redesign shenanigans, people actually like the product they offer (in contrast to facebook) and they are still growing. I wish Reddit stays in the kind of "grey" area where it never gets as "official" as twitter, despite the popularity. If anything, that might be entirely its appeal. That predicament will eternally present a glass ceiling for reddit's revenue, but as a consumer I'd rather see that than it going the full facebook -> hyper growth above anything else approach.
- deleted 7y ago
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- basch 7y ago
  stripe, airbnb, doordash, and instacart make sense because they offer a service people pour money through, and they can take their commission for facilitating the transaction. i would expect valuations to treat those companies better than ad driven link aggregation and message board hosting.
  - firasd 7y ago
    The fact that they offer a paid service is also their weakness in potential valuation, since they have significant marginal costs unlike Reddit. (Stripe is a bit different but I’m referring to Doordash etc.)
- Taylor_OD 7y ago
  I know twitter is a household name and everyone knows about it but is reddit really that far behind? My mom isnt using it yet but has probably been linked to it via twitter and facebook over the last year. Not to sound pretentious but there has been a huge shift in the site as it's grown over the last couple of years. Most of the popular subreddits are just pointing out silly behavior on other websites or asking for the hivemind to weigh in on their personal life.
  - screye 7y ago
arthurcolle 7y ago
Is Brex some kind of tongue-in-cheek reference to Brexit?
- mikekij 7y ago
  No. Unfortunate coincidence.
  - ToFundorNot 7y ago
    doubly so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bre-X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bre-X
- breck 7y ago
  No it's implying that it's my company. ;)
rblion 7y ago
TIL reddit is a YC company. I had no idea this whole time.
- jcsnv 7y ago
  They were part of one of the first batches IIRC
- tlrobinson 7y ago
  It was literally one of the first (of 8) YC companies in 2006.
  - tyre 7y ago
    That batch was wild. Alexis Ohanian, Steve Huffman, Justin Kan, Sam Altman, Aaron Swartz to name a few
- yters 7y ago
  In fact, isn't HN pg's version of reddit?
  - jedberg 7y ago
    It certainly started that way! At this point it's pretty different though. I enjoy both for different reasons.
  - killjoywashere 7y ago
    and HN is written in a lisp pg developed, Arc: http://arclanguage.org/ http://arclanguage.org/
- jedberg 7y ago
  It was the first YC company to exit (publicly, there was one from the same batch that was acquired first but wasn't made public). But then it was spun out again and recapitalized a few years later.
lacker 7y ago
Hmm, how is Cruise #3? It seems like their acquisition was for around a billion dollars, but DoorDash and Coinbase should be above that on the list.
- asdf21 7y ago
  I've never even heard of them... I tried googling and just got cruise.com lol
  - therealdrag0 7y ago
    https://getcruise.com/ https://getcruise.com/
- mwseibel 7y ago
  https://www.wsj.com/articles/gms-driverless-car-unit-receives-1-2-billion-equity-investment-11557236030 https://www.wsj.com/articles/gms-driverless-car-unit-receive...
- frakkingcylons 7y ago
  Consider that even with a recently lowered valuation, Waymo is valued at around $105B [0]. This list might be using a valuation of Cruise as a division of GM, and I'd bet the valuation is in the tens of billions. [0]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-27/waymo-valuation-slashed-on-autonomous-vehicle-tech-delays https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-27/waymo-val...
- segmondy 7y ago
  Acquisition is rooted in reality. Valuation is a toss up, see WeWork. DoorDash & Coinbase could be valued for hundreds of billions, but until they exit by going public or get acquired it's all speculation.
koolba 7y ago
I'd love to see a list like this sorted by gross revenue (i.e. net GDP contribution) or total paid compensation. Contrasting either of those vs. invested capital would be particularly interesting.
yters 7y ago
Gone are the days where innovation means a new invention.
- nickthemagicman 7y ago
  Ive thought this too. Feels like innovation now is making existing products more efficient. All of those top products do that. Not sure if that's good or bad.
  - yters 7y ago
    It's a bit boring, at any rate. But, seems to be a winning formula for PG. And I guess Sam Altman is going to invent the super AI invention machine that will make all human inventions obsolete.
- chubot 7y ago
  When was that ever true? Businesses have always improved something that exists. They don't really exist to create "new inventions". Sometimes they start that way, but those are the exception, not the rule. For example, Xerox (xerography) and Google. Apple did a lot of inventing, but they also clearly stood on the shoulders of Xerox PARC, which did a lot more inventing. Every other company I can think of is not based on "inventions", but more "bringing to market". Netscape was a great tech company, but they didn't invent the web, etc.
  - yters 7y ago
    Sure, lots of the big tech companies used tech invented elsewhere, but still, they were bringing new technologies to market that hadn't been seen before. Internet access through browsers was big and new. Google was a huge step over the competition. Apple iPods and iPhones big and new. Lower down: databases, network hardware, and so on. Now it seems like a bunch of micro-optimizations, ways to avoid legislation, or lifestyle products. Not new forms of technology entering the market that really do change everything. The 'change everything' technologies, like Musks' ventures, seem to be a bunch of moonshots (or marshots).
rwmurrayVT 7y ago
The descriptions of some of these are hilariously SV.
cfontes 7y ago
I am completely out of the loop so might be my ignorance, but why is Brex worth so much? The founders are super smart and accomplished, I even know some people that worked at pagar.me which was big success in Brazil and can say the guys are super hard working and smart. But I fail to understand why Brex is such a wonderful idea, I worked for years on the payments sector and all features listed are fairly common to all major providers.
- tempsy 7y ago
  Because it’s hard for a lot of startups to qualify for traditional corporate charge cards with no personal guarantee even though the venture backed ones have a lot of money in the bank. Personally I think the fact Stripe launched a competitor will make it hard for them to grow as fast as they might have prior.
  - antaviana 7y ago
    Moreover, AFAIK, Stripe is an investor in Brex, so the bet in the corporate card business for Stripe is probably significant.
  - ian0 7y ago
    Not sure if this is the case in the US, but here in SEA we had an unbelievably hard time getting corporate credit cards. In my previous company we were actually building credit card authentication systems for banks and schemes, a private company with years of operation. And still - we werent approved for a card! Never-mind being provided a solution for managing them correctly. In the end, like everyone else, we had to take out personal cards. The problem was, the company was so prompt repaying our personal cards we could never get approved for credit limit increases. Apparently you have to rack up some accruing debt... PS Obviously not related to valuation (perhaps?) but Brex has the most refreshingly clear description on the list "Brex does corporate credit cards."
    - cfontes 7y ago
      nice to know. Thanks for the reply
bryanmgreen 7y ago
I know that social and environmental good organizations historically trend towards the “not as profitable or even profitable” category which makes them less likely to be funded and consequently on this list, but I wish more of the companies on this were driving more important change in the world.
- techslave 7y ago
  so you wish the list were something it’s not.
  - bryanmgreen 7y ago
    What’s your reason for such an antagonist reply? I wish that those types of companies could find ways to generate more revenue and job opportunities and get on lists like this. In the same vein, I think YC has the opportunity and resources to really elevate those types of companies and help them make it big.
alteria 7y ago
2018 list is available here [1], it's interesting to see what the big jumps are. [1]https://web.archive.org/web/20190904014058/https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/v https://web.archive.org/web/20190904014058/https://www.ycomb...
- derwiki 7y ago
  Can I snipe someone into diffing the two and listing “biggest jumps”?
  - johncoogan 7y ago
    Just shared a google sheet with you.
    - alteria 7y ago
      Do you mind sharing it with me as well?
    - jessehu 7y ago
      Would you mind posting it?
- NotSammyHagar 7y ago
  For some reason that link doesn't work, but you can navigate to the right link. Here's the 2018 one: https://web.archive.org/web/20190901025541/https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190901025541/https://www.ycomb...
haolez 7y ago
English is not my native language, but this sentence looks really weird to me: “Helion Energy is breaking the fusion barrier and will be the first to clean, safe, and low-cost commercial electricity.”
- maximusjesse 7y ago
  I think in this case, "clean" is the adjective for electricity. So, "Hello Energy will be the first to clean electricity." It's weird I think because it's easy to read it as a verb, but it's technically grammatically correct.
- tgarv 7y ago
  The weird part of this sentence is that "...will be the first to..." has an implied "arrive at" or "develop" after it -- so it could be read as "Helion Energy is breaking the fusion barrier and will be the first to develop* clean, safe, and low-cost commercial electricity."
AlchemistCamp 7y ago
Interestingly six of the top ten built on Ruby! Python is also strongly represented, but zero started with back-ends on Java, .Net. PHP, or other more broadly popular options. This is strong evidence that the startup world is dramatically different from that of enterprises and businesses where tech is ancillary (which dominate total numbers in popularly shared statistics). In many ways it's a vindication of PG's old essays. Though we're not all using Lisp, startups lean towards it.
- Impossible 7y ago
  How much of this can be attributed to the efficiency or superiority of Ruby as a language vs most of these now maturing start ups being founded during the peak Rails era? If we look at new Unicorns founded today in 8-10 years we'll probably see slightly different stacks based on what is popular and new today, although to be fair I think a lot of the biggest "tech" unicorns IPOing the 2030s won't be traditional web applications.
  - AlchemistCamp 7y ago
    There has never been a "Rails era" in which Ruby represented 60% of the back-end server market share, or even 10% of the share of the languages I listed.
    - Impossible 7y ago
      I'm aware of that. My comment was more about new startups at the time choosing Rails (and getting Ruby with it) with it being the reason why many startups in the list are built with Ruby, rather than an inherent strength of Ruby as a language. Rails did (does?) seem like a superior environment for quickly prototyping and launching web applications, and it's entirely possible nothing has supplanted it. My comment about future unicorns is mainly that Python might be dominant in AI or biotech focused startups, C# might be dominant in AR/VR startups, and more web applications are SPAs built mostly or entirely in JavaScript, so Ruby might have had it's day as people are building early tech in new fields.
tempsy 7y ago
There's a certain irony in a investor (YC) perpetuating the myth of private valuations. Haven't we learned from WeWork and Juul etc that private valuations are mostly meaningless?
- tim333 7y ago
  From the footnotes they say they are a flawed measure but more available than other figures.
- derwiki 7y ago
  WeWork I’ve heard a lot about. Why is Juul’s valuation meaningless? Thanks in advance!
  - wiggles_md 7y ago
    The current vaping-related lung disease crisis, plus alleged sloppy marketing practices at Juul, plus expectations of increased FDA regulatory oversight. They’re still worth something, but Altria’s investment is unlikely to yield a great ROI.
ignoramous 7y ago
Psyched to see Meesho up there. Ecomm over WhatsApp is huge in India and they've acquired a significant customer base judging from the # of app installs (~10M+). My prediction is, it won't be long before they grow too huge to be acquired or get acquired themselves. I count three startups from India in YC S19 batch that rely on WhatsApp as an auxillary platform: 1. https://vahan.co https://vahan.co does recruitment over WhatsApp for low to medium income jobs. 2. https://digi-prex.com https://digi-prex.com is a subscription service for medicines. 3. https://mahamela.in https://mahamela.in a group buying e-commerce business. Another interesting point, I think, is both startups from Zenefits co-founders are in top 100: Rippling and ZeroDown; the latter with just 15 employees. Of the startups on the list, I personally like what Flexport and RigettiComputing are doing. Here is a similar list of top companies I stumbled upon a year or so back (not just limited to YC): https://breakoutlist.com https://breakoutlist.com
yowlingcat 7y ago
Where is valuation? Why isn't it listed? Also, what's up with the weird name "jobs created" for employees? I feel like these details must have been chosen deliberately, but I can't determine why.
- quaquaqua1 7y ago
  The minimum valuation is 150M, and as for the number of employees hired, I would venture to say that they are trying to use it for PR purpose. Employees are a big cost center for a business (a few thousand can cost 100M a year or more) so it sounds like they really want to highlight all the favors they are doing for the world by employing so many people.
  - killjoywashere 7y ago
    > really want to highlight all the favors they are doing for the world by employing so many people Um, well, yes, in a democracy, jobs created is the most interesting metric for politicians, particularly if those jobs are in their district. Those are their constituents. Do you want policies that are friendly toward tech companies and tech workers alike? Because connecting the jobs with the companies is how you do that.
    - yowlingcat 7y ago
      I still think there are subtle issues with the semantics. Does "jobs created" necessarily imply "careers started" or is the case something else? Where are the boundaries? How much of its personnel contributions are part-time workers or independent contractors? Nonetheless, I think you have a great point here. There's a subtle positioning difference between "employees" and "jobs created" -- the latter most directly connects a company's economic impact/participation with its contribution to the domestic labor market.
bugsense 7y ago
Go Nurx!
vanilla-almond 7y ago
Here is a breakdown of the locations based on the HQ US: 85 Remote: 4 Europe: 3 S. America: 3 S. Asia: 3 Canada: 2 Africa: 1 SE Asia: 1 Middle East: 1 Two companies have HQ in two countries hence why the totals above equal 103 and not 101
- usafreeuser 7y ago
  This shows how great America is.
- ignoramous 7y ago
  Aren't all three companies from South Asia Indian: Razorpay, Meesho, and ClearTax?
choppaface 7y ago
Looks like Sam is close to closing at least #1 and #2 on his bets https://blog.samaltman.com/bubble-talk https://blog.samaltman.com/bubble-talk With Gitlab perhaps closing #3
- breck 7y ago
  Pretty solid predictions. 1) The below 6 companies will be worth >$200B by 1/1/2020. public: - uber 50 - pinterest 14 - dropbox 8 private: - airbnb 35 - spacex 33 - palantir 26 $166B so very close so far. 2) Stripe, Zenefits, Instacart, Mixpanel, Teespring, Optimizely, Coinbase, Docker, and Weebly will be worth > $27B total by 1/1/2019. Stripe alone was valued at $35B, so this one looks like a lock. 3) Winter 2015 batch will be worth >$3B on 1/1/2020. GitLab $2.7 So looks pretty close. Impressive.
  - edouard-harris 7y ago
    The top 100 list includes 6 other companies from W15 (Equipment Share, RazorPay, Ironclad, GrubMarket, Notable, and Atomwise). So prediction 3) has definitely come true.
- jeffshek 7y ago
  That was interesting! Considering this article was based in 2015 (which feels like forever in startup years). Decided to look up the points. # max(market_cap, enterprise_value) || most_recent_private_valuation Uber - 50bn Palantir - 10bn SpaceX - 40bn AirBnB - 35bn Dropbox - 10bn Pininterest - 10bn 2) Stripe's most valuation is 35 billion 3) GitLab latest's valuation is 2.75 billion
pascalxus 7y ago
Is there a slow down trend in the number of successful companies funded more recently, say in the last 4 years? I know it takes time for startups to become successful. it just seems that the pre 2015 era had more successful startups. That would mirror the broader trend we see in the marketplace of fewer and fewer successful startups.
nickstinemates 7y ago
Jobs created seems off or I misunderstand it. Docker has more than 400 employees for the past few years.
- forgotmysn 7y ago
  i think these numbers are based on whenever the last valuation was
pazimzadeh 7y ago
Maybe I missed something obvious but what are the ranks based on?
- 37 7y ago
  Very first sentence? (still ambiguous) >Here is a list of the top Y Combinator companies by valuation as of October 2019.
  - pazimzadeh 7y ago
    Whoops thanks
daveed 7y ago
If you look at the diffs between this and the last list, there are def some companies that opted out of listing. Some of them had so much funding that there's no way that they could've just fallen out. For example, Machine Zone, Zenefits, LendUp, Soylent. Also interesting, are supposedly well-capitalized companies from the 2018 list that shut down: uBiome(with a fair amount of attention) and Meta. Other fun observations might just be how much money people are raising. Memsql was 40 in 2018, and is 67 in 2019. I'm guessing they didn't raise money in the time between, and a bunch of companies did so in the meanwhile. Also kind of interesting? CoreOS(2018 #42) was above Heroku (2018 #46), but in this year's list is above them (Heroku #71, CoreOS #73). But both were acquired by the time that the 2018 list was made. I'm not sure what this is about, but maybe it's because the acquisition terms weren't all cash, and there were fluctuations in the intervening time in Salesforce vs RHT(and then, RHT got acquired by IBM so who knows how that factors into the present value of what used to be CoreOS). Fun.
- DeonPenny 7y ago
  Lendup fell of cause it fired most of it's staff after running out of funding. They renamed themselves too.
gopi 7y ago
Surprised Stripe ranked ahead of Airbnb. But thinking about it makes sense, Stripe eventually will skim a percentage out of every transaction on the internet... Also only one ad-supported consumer internet company, all are either Saas or marketplaces
Beefin 7y ago
Breakdown by industry: B2B Software and Services 53 Financial Technology and Services 16 Consumer Goods and Services 11 Education 4 Automotive 3 Biotech 3 Consumer Media 3 Aerospace 2 Construction 2 Healthcare 2 Real Estate 2 Energy and Environment 1

371 points by andygcook 7y ago

Question for YC: How does the list rank companies like Zapier that are growing very fast, but haven't raised in years to set a current valuation? I'd imagine that revenue is factored into play but perhaps not shown.

deleted 7y ago
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toomuchtodo 7y ago
Historically, I have found that these questions won’t receive a response from anyone with valuation insight at YC. I’m unsure why work isn’t shown when arriving at valuations you’re publicly communicating (even if only relative through ordering, such as in this case). I’m not asking for an S-1 or pro forma financial statements, broad strokes would be fine. Also, touting how many people your startup employs when it’s in the job destruction business (Cruise and others) seems like an unhelpful metric to put front and center (startups are rarely going to be net job creators, software, automation, all that jazz). Edit: It’s also odd Docker is #18 when they’re likely about to run out of cash. [1] Disclaimer: I own equity in a YC startup, but am not currently employed by any companies in YCs portfolio. [1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/docker-is-in-deep-trouble/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/docker-is-in-deep-trouble/
austenallred 7y ago
The list only uses their last valuation, so YC just acknowledges it's not a perfect metric and publishes the list by last valuation.
- andygcook 7y ago
  That makes sense and thanks for the reply, Austen. Also, congrats on making the Top #100 for Lambda School.

negrit 7y ago

Surprising to not see Zenefits in the list

e40 7y ago
Perhaps this is why: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/02/zenefits-fires-nearly-half-its-staff https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/02/zenefits-fires-nearl...
jordache 7y ago
lol
capocannoniere 7y ago
While I don't know about Zenefits in particular, keep in mind that YC companies can opt out of this list: > One thing to note is that this is not an exhaustive list of the top YC companies. We allowed alumni to opt out of being listed for any reason.

rsp1984 7y ago

The URL for Embark is actually embarktrucks.com, not embark.com

katm 7y ago
thanks for catching

shubidubi 7y ago

interesting fact - out of the top 100 companies, (only?) 4 are remote.

elmar 7y ago
I know Gitlab, Zapier are remote could you please disclose what are the other two?
- shubidubi 7y ago
  just look for "remote" on the page. the location for each company is in the last column.
- jcomis 7y ago
  Mattermost and Sfox
adpirz 7y ago
Those 4 may be remote only, but there are many others on there that have remote positions.
- woadwarrior01 7y ago
  I can confirm that Reddit has remote positions. I work remotely from Ireland, whilst most of my team is in SF.
marviel 7y ago
not untrue! Though I would point out that because remote is a "new" style of work, it's probably too early in remote work's history to use this as evidence of remote work's unsuitability in general. This being because there are likely a number of "tricks" to making remote employment work properly that today's remote companies haven't yet mastered, while in contrast physical companies have a significant and long cultural history to pull the best ideas from. TL;DR: yes, but I think remote work is also at Semver 0.X.Y right now so we should give it some time to grow
7y ago

screye 7y ago

I am surprised that reddit is on #13. It's alexa rank in US social media websites is #2 behind Facebook. Apart form their redesign shenanigans, people actually like the product they offer (in contrast to facebook) and they are still growing. I wish Reddit stays in the kind of "grey" area where it never gets as "official" as twitter, despite the popularity. If anything, that might be entirely its appeal. That predicament will eternally present a glass ceiling for reddit's revenue, but as a consumer I'd rather see that than it going the full facebook -> hyper growth above anything else approach.

deleted 7y ago
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basch 7y ago
stripe, airbnb, doordash, and instacart make sense because they offer a service people pour money through, and they can take their commission for facilitating the transaction. i would expect valuations to treat those companies better than ad driven link aggregation and message board hosting.
- firasd 7y ago
  The fact that they offer a paid service is also their weakness in potential valuation, since they have significant marginal costs unlike Reddit. (Stripe is a bit different but I’m referring to Doordash etc.)
Taylor_OD 7y ago
I know twitter is a household name and everyone knows about it but is reddit really that far behind? My mom isnt using it yet but has probably been linked to it via twitter and facebook over the last year. Not to sound pretentious but there has been a huge shift in the site as it's grown over the last couple of years. Most of the popular subreddits are just pointing out silly behavior on other websites or asking for the hivemind to weigh in on their personal life.
- screye 7y ago

arthurcolle 7y ago

Is Brex some kind of tongue-in-cheek reference to Brexit?

mikekij 7y ago
No. Unfortunate coincidence.
- ToFundorNot 7y ago
  doubly so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bre-X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bre-X
breck 7y ago
No it's implying that it's my company. ;)

rblion 7y ago

TIL reddit is a YC company. I had no idea this whole time.

jcsnv 7y ago
They were part of one of the first batches IIRC
tlrobinson 7y ago
It was literally one of the first (of 8) YC companies in 2006.
- tyre 7y ago
  That batch was wild. Alexis Ohanian, Steve Huffman, Justin Kan, Sam Altman, Aaron Swartz to name a few
yters 7y ago
In fact, isn't HN pg's version of reddit?
- jedberg 7y ago
  It certainly started that way! At this point it's pretty different though. I enjoy both for different reasons.
- killjoywashere 7y ago
  and HN is written in a lisp pg developed, Arc: http://arclanguage.org/ http://arclanguage.org/
jedberg 7y ago
It was the first YC company to exit (publicly, there was one from the same batch that was acquired first but wasn't made public). But then it was spun out again and recapitalized a few years later.

lacker 7y ago

Hmm, how is Cruise #3? It seems like their acquisition was for around a billion dollars, but DoorDash and Coinbase should be above that on the list.

asdf21 7y ago
I've never even heard of them... I tried googling and just got cruise.com lol
- therealdrag0 7y ago
  https://getcruise.com/ https://getcruise.com/
mwseibel 7y ago
https://www.wsj.com/articles/gms-driverless-car-unit-receives-1-2-billion-equity-investment-11557236030 https://www.wsj.com/articles/gms-driverless-car-unit-receive...
frakkingcylons 7y ago
Consider that even with a recently lowered valuation, Waymo is valued at around $105B [0]. This list might be using a valuation of Cruise as a division of GM, and I'd bet the valuation is in the tens of billions. [0]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-27/waymo-valuation-slashed-on-autonomous-vehicle-tech-delays https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-27/waymo-val...
segmondy 7y ago
Acquisition is rooted in reality. Valuation is a toss up, see WeWork. DoorDash & Coinbase could be valued for hundreds of billions, but until they exit by going public or get acquired it's all speculation.

koolba 7y ago

I'd love to see a list like this sorted by gross revenue (i.e. net GDP contribution) or total paid compensation. Contrasting either of those vs. invested capital would be particularly interesting.

yters 7y ago

Gone are the days where innovation means a new invention.

nickthemagicman 7y ago
Ive thought this too. Feels like innovation now is making existing products more efficient. All of those top products do that. Not sure if that's good or bad.
- yters 7y ago
  It's a bit boring, at any rate. But, seems to be a winning formula for PG. And I guess Sam Altman is going to invent the super AI invention machine that will make all human inventions obsolete.
chubot 7y ago
When was that ever true? Businesses have always improved something that exists. They don't really exist to create "new inventions". Sometimes they start that way, but those are the exception, not the rule. For example, Xerox (xerography) and Google. Apple did a lot of inventing, but they also clearly stood on the shoulders of Xerox PARC, which did a lot more inventing. Every other company I can think of is not based on "inventions", but more "bringing to market". Netscape was a great tech company, but they didn't invent the web, etc.
- yters 7y ago
  Sure, lots of the big tech companies used tech invented elsewhere, but still, they were bringing new technologies to market that hadn't been seen before. Internet access through browsers was big and new. Google was a huge step over the competition. Apple iPods and iPhones big and new. Lower down: databases, network hardware, and so on. Now it seems like a bunch of micro-optimizations, ways to avoid legislation, or lifestyle products. Not new forms of technology entering the market that really do change everything. The 'change everything' technologies, like Musks' ventures, seem to be a bunch of moonshots (or marshots).

rwmurrayVT 7y ago

The descriptions of some of these are hilariously SV.

cfontes 7y ago

I am completely out of the loop so might be my ignorance, but why is Brex worth so much? The founders are super smart and accomplished, I even know some people that worked at pagar.me which was big success in Brazil and can say the guys are super hard working and smart. But I fail to understand why Brex is such a wonderful idea, I worked for years on the payments sector and all features listed are fairly common to all major providers.

tempsy 7y ago
Because it’s hard for a lot of startups to qualify for traditional corporate charge cards with no personal guarantee even though the venture backed ones have a lot of money in the bank. Personally I think the fact Stripe launched a competitor will make it hard for them to grow as fast as they might have prior.
- antaviana 7y ago
  Moreover, AFAIK, Stripe is an investor in Brex, so the bet in the corporate card business for Stripe is probably significant.
- ian0 7y ago
  Not sure if this is the case in the US, but here in SEA we had an unbelievably hard time getting corporate credit cards. In my previous company we were actually building credit card authentication systems for banks and schemes, a private company with years of operation. And still - we werent approved for a card! Never-mind being provided a solution for managing them correctly. In the end, like everyone else, we had to take out personal cards. The problem was, the company was so prompt repaying our personal cards we could never get approved for credit limit increases. Apparently you have to rack up some accruing debt... PS Obviously not related to valuation (perhaps?) but Brex has the most refreshingly clear description on the list "Brex does corporate credit cards."
  - cfontes 7y ago
    nice to know. Thanks for the reply

bryanmgreen 7y ago

I know that social and environmental good organizations historically trend towards the “not as profitable or even profitable” category which makes them less likely to be funded and consequently on this list, but I wish more of the companies on this were driving more important change in the world.

techslave 7y ago
so you wish the list were something it’s not.
- bryanmgreen 7y ago
  What’s your reason for such an antagonist reply? I wish that those types of companies could find ways to generate more revenue and job opportunities and get on lists like this. In the same vein, I think YC has the opportunity and resources to really elevate those types of companies and help them make it big.

alteria 7y ago

2018 list is available here [1], it's interesting to see what the big jumps are. [1]https://web.archive.org/web/20190904014058/https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/v https://web.archive.org/web/20190904014058/https://www.ycomb...

derwiki 7y ago
Can I snipe someone into diffing the two and listing “biggest jumps”?
- johncoogan 7y ago
  Just shared a google sheet with you.
  - alteria 7y ago
    Do you mind sharing it with me as well?
  - jessehu 7y ago
    Would you mind posting it?
NotSammyHagar 7y ago
For some reason that link doesn't work, but you can navigate to the right link. Here's the 2018 one: https://web.archive.org/web/20190901025541/https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190901025541/https://www.ycomb...

haolez 7y ago

English is not my native language, but this sentence looks really weird to me: “Helion Energy is breaking the fusion barrier and will be the first to clean, safe, and low-cost commercial electricity.”

maximusjesse 7y ago
I think in this case, "clean" is the adjective for electricity. So, "Hello Energy will be the first to clean electricity." It's weird I think because it's easy to read it as a verb, but it's technically grammatically correct.
tgarv 7y ago
The weird part of this sentence is that "...will be the first to..." has an implied "arrive at" or "develop" after it -- so it could be read as "Helion Energy is breaking the fusion barrier and will be the first to develop* clean, safe, and low-cost commercial electricity."

AlchemistCamp 7y ago

Interestingly six of the top ten built on Ruby! Python is also strongly represented, but zero started with back-ends on Java, .Net. PHP, or other more broadly popular options. This is strong evidence that the startup world is dramatically different from that of enterprises and businesses where tech is ancillary (which dominate total numbers in popularly shared statistics). In many ways it's a vindication of PG's old essays. Though we're not all using Lisp, startups lean towards it.

Impossible 7y ago
How much of this can be attributed to the efficiency or superiority of Ruby as a language vs most of these now maturing start ups being founded during the peak Rails era? If we look at new Unicorns founded today in 8-10 years we'll probably see slightly different stacks based on what is popular and new today, although to be fair I think a lot of the biggest "tech" unicorns IPOing the 2030s won't be traditional web applications.
- AlchemistCamp 7y ago
  There has never been a "Rails era" in which Ruby represented 60% of the back-end server market share, or even 10% of the share of the languages I listed.
  - Impossible 7y ago
    I'm aware of that. My comment was more about new startups at the time choosing Rails (and getting Ruby with it) with it being the reason why many startups in the list are built with Ruby, rather than an inherent strength of Ruby as a language. Rails did (does?) seem like a superior environment for quickly prototyping and launching web applications, and it's entirely possible nothing has supplanted it. My comment about future unicorns is mainly that Python might be dominant in AI or biotech focused startups, C# might be dominant in AR/VR startups, and more web applications are SPAs built mostly or entirely in JavaScript, so Ruby might have had it's day as people are building early tech in new fields.

tempsy 7y ago

There's a certain irony in a investor (YC) perpetuating the myth of private valuations. Haven't we learned from WeWork and Juul etc that private valuations are mostly meaningless?

tim333 7y ago
From the footnotes they say they are a flawed measure but more available than other figures.
derwiki 7y ago
WeWork I’ve heard a lot about. Why is Juul’s valuation meaningless? Thanks in advance!
- wiggles_md 7y ago
  The current vaping-related lung disease crisis, plus alleged sloppy marketing practices at Juul, plus expectations of increased FDA regulatory oversight. They’re still worth something, but Altria’s investment is unlikely to yield a great ROI.

ignoramous 7y ago

Psyched to see Meesho up there. Ecomm over WhatsApp is huge in India and they've acquired a significant customer base judging from the # of app installs (~10M+). My prediction is, it won't be long before they grow too huge to be acquired or get acquired themselves. I count three startups from India in YC S19 batch that rely on WhatsApp as an auxillary platform: 1. https://vahan.co https://vahan.co does recruitment over WhatsApp for low to medium income jobs. 2. https://digi-prex.com https://digi-prex.com is a subscription service for medicines. 3. https://mahamela.in https://mahamela.in a group buying e-commerce business. Another interesting point, I think, is both startups from Zenefits co-founders are in top 100: Rippling and ZeroDown; the latter with just 15 employees. Of the startups on the list, I personally like what Flexport and RigettiComputing are doing. Here is a similar list of top companies I stumbled upon a year or so back (not just limited to YC): https://breakoutlist.com https://breakoutlist.com

yowlingcat 7y ago

Where is valuation? Why isn't it listed? Also, what's up with the weird name "jobs created" for employees? I feel like these details must have been chosen deliberately, but I can't determine why.

quaquaqua1 7y ago
The minimum valuation is 150M, and as for the number of employees hired, I would venture to say that they are trying to use it for PR purpose. Employees are a big cost center for a business (a few thousand can cost 100M a year or more) so it sounds like they really want to highlight all the favors they are doing for the world by employing so many people.
- killjoywashere 7y ago
  > really want to highlight all the favors they are doing for the world by employing so many people Um, well, yes, in a democracy, jobs created is the most interesting metric for politicians, particularly if those jobs are in their district. Those are their constituents. Do you want policies that are friendly toward tech companies and tech workers alike? Because connecting the jobs with the companies is how you do that.
  - yowlingcat 7y ago
    I still think there are subtle issues with the semantics. Does "jobs created" necessarily imply "careers started" or is the case something else? Where are the boundaries? How much of its personnel contributions are part-time workers or independent contractors? Nonetheless, I think you have a great point here. There's a subtle positioning difference between "employees" and "jobs created" -- the latter most directly connects a company's economic impact/participation with its contribution to the domestic labor market.

bugsense 7y ago

Go Nurx!

vanilla-almond 7y ago

Here is a breakdown of the locations based on the HQ US: 85 Remote: 4 Europe: 3 S. America: 3 S. Asia: 3 Canada: 2 Africa: 1 SE Asia: 1 Middle East: 1 Two companies have HQ in two countries hence why the totals above equal 103 and not 101

usafreeuser 7y ago
This shows how great America is.
ignoramous 7y ago
Aren't all three companies from South Asia Indian: Razorpay, Meesho, and ClearTax?

choppaface 7y ago

Looks like Sam is close to closing at least #1 and #2 on his bets https://blog.samaltman.com/bubble-talk https://blog.samaltman.com/bubble-talk With Gitlab perhaps closing #3

breck 7y ago
Pretty solid predictions. 1) The below 6 companies will be worth >$200B by 1/1/2020. public: - uber 50 - pinterest 14 - dropbox 8 private: - airbnb 35 - spacex 33 - palantir 26 $166B so very close so far. 2) Stripe, Zenefits, Instacart, Mixpanel, Teespring, Optimizely, Coinbase, Docker, and Weebly will be worth > $27B total by 1/1/2019. Stripe alone was valued at $35B, so this one looks like a lock. 3) Winter 2015 batch will be worth >$3B on 1/1/2020. GitLab $2.7 So looks pretty close. Impressive.
- edouard-harris 7y ago
  The top 100 list includes 6 other companies from W15 (Equipment Share, RazorPay, Ironclad, GrubMarket, Notable, and Atomwise). So prediction 3) has definitely come true.
jeffshek 7y ago
That was interesting! Considering this article was based in 2015 (which feels like forever in startup years). Decided to look up the points. # max(market_cap, enterprise_value) || most_recent_private_valuation Uber - 50bn Palantir - 10bn SpaceX - 40bn AirBnB - 35bn Dropbox - 10bn Pininterest - 10bn 2) Stripe's most valuation is 35 billion 3) GitLab latest's valuation is 2.75 billion

pascalxus 7y ago

Is there a slow down trend in the number of successful companies funded more recently, say in the last 4 years? I know it takes time for startups to become successful. it just seems that the pre 2015 era had more successful startups. That would mirror the broader trend we see in the marketplace of fewer and fewer successful startups.

nickstinemates 7y ago

Jobs created seems off or I misunderstand it. Docker has more than 400 employees for the past few years.

forgotmysn 7y ago
i think these numbers are based on whenever the last valuation was

pazimzadeh 7y ago

Maybe I missed something obvious but what are the ranks based on?

37 7y ago
Very first sentence? (still ambiguous) >Here is a list of the top Y Combinator companies by valuation as of October 2019.
- pazimzadeh 7y ago
  Whoops thanks

daveed 7y ago

If you look at the diffs between this and the last list, there are def some companies that opted out of listing. Some of them had so much funding that there's no way that they could've just fallen out. For example, Machine Zone, Zenefits, LendUp, Soylent. Also interesting, are supposedly well-capitalized companies from the 2018 list that shut down: uBiome(with a fair amount of attention) and Meta. Other fun observations might just be how much money people are raising. Memsql was 40 in 2018, and is 67 in 2019. I'm guessing they didn't raise money in the time between, and a bunch of companies did so in the meanwhile. Also kind of interesting? CoreOS(2018 #42) was above Heroku (2018 #46), but in this year's list is above them (Heroku #71, CoreOS #73). But both were acquired by the time that the 2018 list was made. I'm not sure what this is about, but maybe it's because the acquisition terms weren't all cash, and there were fluctuations in the intervening time in Salesforce vs RHT(and then, RHT got acquired by IBM so who knows how that factors into the present value of what used to be CoreOS). Fun.

DeonPenny 7y ago
Lendup fell of cause it fired most of it's staff after running out of funding. They renamed themselves too.

gopi 7y ago

Surprised Stripe ranked ahead of Airbnb. But thinking about it makes sense, Stripe eventually will skim a percentage out of every transaction on the internet... Also only one ad-supported consumer internet company, all are either Saas or marketplaces

Beefin 7y ago

Breakdown by industry: B2B Software and Services 53 Financial Technology and Services 16 Consumer Goods and Services 11 Education 4 Automotive 3 Biotech 3 Consumer Media 3 Aerospace 2 Construction 2 Healthcare 2 Real Estate 2 Energy and Environment 1