> out of how many times? Let's do the math. YC has had 378 exits out of 4314 investments [0], so roughly 9% so far. Most investments have been made recently en

> out of how many times? Let's do the math. YC has had 378 exits out of 4314 investments [0], so roughly 9% so far. Most investments have been made recently enough that those companies are still baking, so let's double that number to 18%. The only other number of you need is how likely you are to get into YC. Their overall acceptance rate is 1.75% per application[1], so if you apply three times with the same startup, you get to 5.25%. That figure includes literally everyone and their grandmother, so let's assume you're deciding between a startup and FAANG. Well, FAANG's acceptance in late stages of interviews is around 15% [2], so your YC acceptance chances are around 33%. Combine 33% and 18%, and you get 6% per lifecycle of a startup. If you try that with four startups, you're at 24%. Is 24% a good deal? Well, it depends on the upside and the opportunity cost. Let's assume it took you 16 years to build 4 failed startups. In that time period, you could have earned around $5m at FAANG ($300k/year). Of course, things could have also gone wrong (bad manager, your screwed up, layoffs), so let's peg that chance at 80%, which gives the opportunity cost of $4m. The average YC exit is $24m (not taking into account the whales, which ballooned the overall YC portfolio to over $300B) - the $24m seems like a pretty conservative take [3]. That yields almost $6m upside, not including dilution. Hard to guess what the average dilution is, but I bet you it's higher than 33%, which would have been the breakeven point. Darn it, startups suck! :) [0] https://www.cbinsights.com/investor/y-combinator https://www.cbinsights.com/investor/y-combinator [1] https://www.ycombinator.com/investors https://www.ycombinator.com/investors [2] https://www.teamblind.com/post/Whats-fangs-interview-selection-rate-DTEdgUws https://www.teamblind.com/post/Whats-fangs-interview-selecti... [3] https://www.shawnngtq.com/projects/y-combinator-startups-analysis https://www.shawnngtq.com/projects/y-combinator-startups-ana....