"37 of the 511 companies that have gone through the Y Combinator program over the past 5 years" These 511 include companies that are a few months old as well a

"37 of the 511 companies that have gone through the Y Combinator program over the past 5 years" These 511 include companies that are a few months old as well as companies that are 5 years old. No business is gonna be worth 40 million dollars right away. I'd say you have to give a company at least 5 years until you judge its success or failure on whether or not they're worth 40 million dollars. So then, I'd say a more telling statistic would be: of the YCombinator companies who have been around 5+ years, how many of them are worth 40 million? And 40 million is high for a barometer of success. I'd probably make it 5 or 10 million. (who wouldn't be happy with a 5-10 million dollar company). And if you want to judge younger companies, you could come up with another stat, but you have to have lower expectations for younger companies. Sorry to say, but this big shot needs to go back to Yale and take a course on statistics.