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The Y Combinator Startup Index
- giis 14y agoAnyone here know, whats the difference between Alexa Traffic Rank and Alexa Rank (Web Traffic)?
- salman89 14y agoGood comparison for RapGenius/9GAG type sites, but generally comparing startups based on a traffic ranking is probably not the way to go.
- dbyrd 14y agoStartups that sell things don't need as much traffic to make the same amount of money. Dropbox & Airbnb should be a lot higher than Scribd. Also, the list is missing Shoptiques.
- wilfra 14y agoStripe as well is way undervalued in a ranking like this and any business that revolves around pageviews is going to be overvalued.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- donebizkit 14y agoGood effort! It's very nice to see the list on one sheet instead of following links on crunchbase or angellist. What was the methodology for coming up with the overall rank?
- mrchess 14y agoDirect link to YC spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0ApqWF3CqjgjSdE9lSVN3bGxxNEM5aFRCb0ZHc09ZSHc https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0ApqWF3CqjgjSdE9... (terribly hard to view in the blog post IFRAME)
- jedc 14y agoInteresting! Danielle, would be interested in figuring out how I could help you automate this through Seed-DB (http://www.seed-db.com http://www.seed-db.com)
- jessedhillon 14y agoI've been browsing this for the past week or so and was wondering -- how do you generate your valuation estimates? Seems like the sum of exits for something like YC could be off by as much as $250M if you consider that the low quality estimates could vary by 100%+ from their true value. http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators/view?acceleratorid=1011 http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators/view?acceleratorid=1011
- jedc 14y agoThere are no valuation estimates; just estimates on sale prices when companies have exited. Luckily the biggest exits are the ones that have press interest and thus have a price attached. My methodology depends on research into previous funding rounds and a bit of guesswork, influenced by how the exit is framed. (Is it an acquihire? Or a traditional exit?) The reason I put the H/M/L indications is to be up-front and honest about it. You're correct in that they could be off, but $250million is <25% of the total value of exits that I have recorded. In some cases I've had insiders e-mail me with details where my estimate is off; in these cases I do correct my figure but keep the original H/M/L indication.
- jessedhillon 14y agoWow, that's amazing that insiders are sharing knowledge with you like that. Ever since I've found seed-db I've been sharing the surprising (to me) fact with people that YC has ~90% of the recorded exists in the accelerator ecosystem. That figure, of course, comes with an asterisk :)
- jedc 14y agoFrankly, YC startups get the lion share of press attention. Between that and Hacker News, it's always easier to get information on YC startup exits than those from other programs. And generally insiders only get in touch with me around my worst valuation errors. :)
- dkasper 14y agoJustin.tv also does Twitch.tv which is ranked 573 on Alexa, not sure about the other stats for them.
- shaufler 14y agoHey Danielle, your list is missing Rap Genius. Its Alexa scores (http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/rapgenius.com http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/rapgenius.com) should rank it number 8 on the list behind AirBnb.
- dmor 14y agoThank you, I will update it with all the feedback on this thread so keep it coming. Check back shortly and you'll see Rap Genius on there
- mahmoudimus 14y agoJust for giggles, I checked http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/balancedpayments.com http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/balancedpayments.com and Balanced comes in at 93 after PagerDuty.
- herdrick 14y agoVery cool.
- rock_hard 14y agoAppData MAUs are off by 3 digits on at least two of the companies :/
- dmor 14y agoif you want to email me at the address in my profile I'd be happy to fix it
- jamwt 14y agoYes, waaay off. Just using publicly available data like top 10 social networks, you can see Bump is top 10 in many regions: http://www.apple.com/euro/itunes/charts/apps/top10appstoresocialnetworking.html http://www.apple.com/euro/itunes/charts/apps/top10appstoreso... The MAU numbers are way off for us (and some others I have a pretty good idea about), so I'm not sure you're measuring anything accurately about mobile, FYI. - Jamie @ bump
- dmor 14y agoMy methodology doesn't currently include mobile, I will add more data sources and update the approach in the April version
- slashCJ 14y agoPretty cool. Only comment would be to add in something that takes into account Estimated Revenue or Valuation (no way Airbnb can be considered 7th). I'm not sure of an easy data source for that so you might be able to use the Crunchbase api for Total Funding as a first order approximation.(Kind of surprised Crunchbase doesn't have latest valuation / revenue numbers, rumored or real)
- kristopher 14y agoGood effort, although I thought it was interesting that revenues were not included as a metric.
- JacobAldridge 14y agoI'm sure if the data were publicly available it would be, but in reality that would just introduce a whole load of bs guessing games to the ranking.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- pzaich 14y agoIsn't this list missing Reddit?
- jaredsohn 14y agoIt doesn't included dead and exited startups. (Reddit was acquired by Condé Nast.)
- seeingfurther 14y agoಠ_ಠ
- marcamillion 14y agoPG and crew always seem to debate that the startups view their batch-mates as competition. This will likely exacerbate that, so I am interested to see what PG thinks about all of this.
- dmor 14y agoHmmm, that's not how I saw it at all going through YC. The companies on the top of this list are the ones I look up to, and it's cool to see people sticking it out after 3+ years and kicking ass. There was healthy competition inside the batch to do things like launch and have new stuff to show off each week, but it always felt motivating not mean-spirited.
- marcamillion 14y agoWell...that's usually the feedback we hear from YC-founders themselves. There is competition, but it is friendly, not adversarial like the tech press likes to paint. But, if I recall correctly, I distinctly remember PG & gang bristling when they hear this - because they don't want to feed any competition at all. Well....that's just my impression, as an outsider looking in anyway. Either way, this is an intriguing concept for sure :)
- paulwithap 14y agoI had no idea 9Gag was YC-backed. You've created a monster.
- SwaroopH 14y agoPrevious class, 9Gag had been around for a while before they got into YC.
- Kiro 14y agoMost successful YC company if you ask me.
- TheShadowFog 14y agoDisgusting.
- purephase 14y agoIn what terms? If usefulness is taken into consideration I would rate Dropbox and Stripe considerably higher (and a few others).
- seferphier 14y ago9gag was immensely popular and profitable before joining YC. They joined YC for the experience. They monetize the service by ad impressions. I can't think of any other ways they can more deeply engage with the audience while monetizing at the same time.
- mrwhy2k 14y agoYou should look at Alexa for world traffic vs US traffic, not many YC companies are targeting international users yet but are very successful in the US. Take into account FB/Twitter followers as well. Even though followers don't determine success, companies that don't grow their social side of the business usually indicate a slow growth or nongrowth business. Also goes to show how much extra time or money they have to throw at it.
- zeeg 14y agoThese stats hardly rank some companies like Disqus where they should be. In all honesty, I'm surprised (with the metrics used) that it ranks Disqus as well as it does at all. It also can't gauge the most important metric of them all: revenue.
- tptacek 14y agoMost private companies don't publish revenue numbers, no matter what industry they're in.
- zeeg 14y agoMy point is that the metrics used are mostly meaningless
- olegp 14y agoI think the absolute numbers may indeed poor indicators, but looking at the derivative or trends tells a different story. At https://starthq.com https://starthq.com we are working on recording historic data and showing the rate of acceleration in numbers like Compete rank to give an indication as to whether the startup is up and coming, has plateaued or is in decline.
- benhalllondon 14y agoRevenue is vanity, profit is sanity.
- olegp 14y agoThis is great! We’ve been working on something similar at https://starthq.com https://starthq.com to automatically generate a popularity score for B2B web apps: http://starthq.uservoice.com/forums/198432-roadmap/suggestions/3754180-combined-popularity-score http://starthq.uservoice.com/forums/198432-roadmap/suggestio... dmor: Would you be OK with us adapting your method, with attribution of course? We would be able to calculate the scores automatically and update them daily.
- avich3 14y agoLoved it. very useful
- rvwaveren 14y agoI've visualized the data so you can get insights quicker: http://ycindex.silkapp.com/ http://ycindex.silkapp.com/
- chmike 14y agoThis is an excellent initiative and has the benefit to cast some light and provide visibility on the Y Combinator startups. They will love that. On the other hand the one dimensional ranking is not a good idea because the reality is that this doesn't exit. There are many parameters to consider and many of them are not disclosed. Maybe you could converge interest of Y Combinator startups seeking visibility and high value contacts, and on the other end, people who want to know who the Y Combinator startups are, what they do, where there are at it. Some people might event want to pay a fee for premium information or access to backstage information. It could be a facebook like server for Y Combinator startups with premium services.
- ntomaino 14y agoInteresting to see Scribd has such a high Alexa and FB mau rank. Scribd is not as hyped as the rest of the top 10 imo. Anyone know if they are profitable?
- GBKS 14y agoOne thing I'd love to see this evolve into is a timeline for each company. When it was started, when they received funding and how much, when they reached 10k/1m/10m users, etc. It could look like an Alexa/Compete/etc chart with these milestones added on top. This would make for a great research tool.
- biznickman 14y agoI built something like this at http://startupstats.com http://startupstats.com and have indexed close to 50,000 companies with time series data to derive the trends over time. Will have to release a leaderboard so people can see what's popping up! The biggest issue I've found so far is that it requires human analysis. The leaderboards simply serve as a way to guide you to dig deeper
- dmor 14y agoWhy is the signup process so many painful email based steps? I gave you my email address thinking I would get access to your site, but I find myself on a mailing/waitlist.
- biznickman 14y agoDidn't realize its painful to enter your email and press submit! I didn't release the leaderboards yet but will do so quickly. Happy to show you them though if you email me
- nvr219 14y agoI have a question about the design of the web site in the OP. I'm bringing it up because it seems to hit the front page a lot. Why does the author's face show up in 5 different images above the fold, on every page on the site? I'm counting byline on the left, header image, 2 tweets, and a drawing of the author on the right. I feel like this is a celebrity web site but I have no idea who this person is so it's weird.
- cdelsolar 14y agoLast I checked we at Leftronic haven't died nor are we going to :)