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1) Yes. It's true of angel investments generally too, the top companies form a disproportionately large percentage of the value. 2) Yes, you basically need to
by ig1 14y ago
1) Yes. It's true of angel investments generally too, the top companies form a disproportionately large percentage of the value.
2) Yes, you basically need to do cohort analysis for meaningful results.
3) It depends what you mean by "most seed accelerators don't matter", certainly there's a big drop-off in quality in startups as you go further down the rankings of seed accelerators and VCs pay less attention to them. That doesn't mean that the accelerators aren't adding value to the startups though.
- edanm 14y agoYes, it turns out the article is correct (see also frankdenbow's helpful comment below). Follow-up question/observation: the article makes it see like only Dropbox and AirBNB were "winners", which I understood to mean they were the only 2 that gave YC a return. Here's the quote from the article: 'And even though most YC companies have no problems raising additional capital, the program has only produced two big “winners.” Dropbox and Airbnb make up three quarters of the value of Y Combinator’s $10 billion portfolio. That’s two huge successes out of something like 400 companies.' Is this only true because Dropbox and Airbnb are spectacularly successful? E.g., if another YC company became the next Google next year, would the article have said "YC has produced only 1 success", and Drobpox/Airbnb would be relegated to "not as good as the Google-sized success"?