But in talking with a slew of Y Combinator alumni from the past three years of YC batches, we found that Graham himself takes between 5 percent and 7 percent of

But in talking with a slew of Y Combinator alumni from the past three years of YC batches, we found that Graham himself takes between 5 percent and 7 percent of companies for amounts ranging between $12,000 and $20,000. Those amounts aren’t any great secret; YC publishes approximations on its own site. But while the founders said YC insisted that these terms had nothing to do with their companies’ actual valuations, on paper, it made the startups worth between $228,000 and $287,000 on the high end. This is based on the faulty assumption that $12-20k is all you get for getting into YC.