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YC Stats Winter 2015
- bytasv 12y agoIs "Countries represented" only from W15 or overall? If it's only from W15, could it be possible to know the list of all countries represented since the beginning of YC?
- katm 12y agoThis is only representative of W15 companies. We don't have a list of countries overall, since it's not something we've always tracked. But that would certainly be interesting to see.
- illdave 12y agoInteresting to note that the average founder age is 30.27 (median is 29). Not that that's old, of course - just that I imagined it'd be younger.
- solve 12y agoThe median age has been pinned to the '84 - '85 age group since the start.
- NhanH 12y agoWhat does it mean? Is it that the '84-'84 age group has always been the median since the first YC? (Ie. the median is increasing every year?)
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- pavlov 12y agoIf this is true, maybe there's something particularly interesting about the '84/'85 generation. These people were about 10 years old when the Web happened and 15 years old when Napster and digital cameras took off, so they probably haven't written too many snailmail letters, bought CDs or taken photos on film. Perhaps that gives them a perspective that's more "digitally native" than older people, yet they have more experience than the '90s-born generation. (I'm one of those "old" people I guess, being born in 1980...)
- lettergram 12y agoThere probably is nothing unique about he '84/'85 generation. There is an unconscious bias when reviewing applications (especially during interviews) to vote/side with people that look/act/know the same references/same point in life/etc like you. Since previous YC graduates both recommend and (some) decide who gets in, they match what they know.
- solve 12y agoMy theory - people in this age group entered college at a very low point in the software development market. This was both because of the dot-com bubble crash, and because outsourcing had just begun and quality outsourcing was far cheaper than it is today. C, Java, and horrible APIs dominated at the time. Javascript and browser compatibility were a mess. It was a far less glamorous industry than it's become now over the past 15 years. Few people who began training for a development career at this time were in it just for quick money.
- Alex3917 12y agoSo I was born in '84 and I've been following YC since it launched in 2005. I think there are actually a few unique things about this generation: - Grew up reading Slashdot, steeped in the values and beliefs of the OSS community. - Were coming of age during the golden age of blogging ('05-'06) when people with a lot of industry experience were making their insights widely available for the first time. E.g. during the beginning of college when we were all trying to figure out what to do with our lives, suddenly the knowledge of how and why to do a startup became available. - Coming of age when not suddenly it became possible (but before it easy) to build software that reached a billion people and changed the world. - Coming of age during the birth of marketing 2.0 -- The Cluetrain Manifesto, Seth Godin, Kathy Sierra, Hugh McCleod, etc. - Coming of age during the birth of Web 2.0, when suddenly every web business needed to be rebuilt around new design principles, technology (AJAX), and promotional techniques. - Around for the birth of Y Combinator and The Facebook. - Impossible to get a job with any possible upward mobility when graduating. Most of this was happening our sophomore/junior year in college, when suddenly we knew all of this really important world-changing stuff that almost no one with established careers was paying attention to yet. So yeah, I'm sure our generation isn't unique and wasn't the only one affected by these things, but I do think they probably had a disproportionate impact on us.
- tarr11 12y agoIt'd be nice to see this data as a distribution. Would tell us a lot more than a median. This might help older founders decide if it's a good fit, or if we'd be outliers there.
- codeonfire 12y agoWhy would you not assume the opposite? I would assume the most experienced people with the most knowledge, contacts, and money to be in their 40s and 50s.
- adevine 12y agoWell, a big point of YC is that it provides the "contacts and money". And of course anyone who is further along in their career has more at risk by going to a startup.
- dominicgs 12y agoWarning, I'm about to make a couple of massive generalisations... I would guess that most 40-50 year olds who already have knowledge, contacts and money don't apply to YC, probably because they don't feel that they need it. I expect that founders at that age are more likely to be coming from a position of experience within their target industry, i.e. solving a problem that they've seen/experienced. They may not be trying to become "X for Y" but solving problem Z that a limited number of clients will pay good money to have solved. Older founders may have more to risk, so the "go big or go home" model may not be as attractive to them. As I said, this is a huge generalisation with a lot of guesswork thrown in. I would love to see some more detailed data so that we could draw some conclusions.
- pc86 12y agoNot to mention the fact that it's probably quite a bit harder to convince a group of 40-50 year olds to move to SV for 3 months for $18k than it is a group a 21 year olds.
- codeonfire 12y agoIt's $120k now but yes, one 40 year old engineer working full time makes that in 9 months. Why doesn't YC offer more attractive investment, say $500k, and allow non-SV offices? Is it just the presumption that this won't lead to large returns? Is there any data to support that?
- deleted 12y ago
- dataker 12y agoAny stats on other batches? Has the median age gone up?
- outericky 12y agoI think the median age reflects the types of companies in the batch. I think in general, younger entrepreneurs take on Consumer, maybe marketplace, and perhaps some dev tools and hardware. The remaining categories will likely have older, more experienced people
- waterlesscloud 12y agoI'd like to know more about the biomedical companies. There's a lot more of them than I would have imagined. They have to be relatively capital intensive to get going, at least compared to a software startup.
- kriro 12y agoThat would have been my guess as well. For many B2B problems you kind of have to understand the right hand side B which means some industry experience. Same for something like aerospace and finance I'd guess. That being said I also intuitively assumed a younger age. Most certainly bias on my side since it's the youngest founders I tend to read about online.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- minimaxir 12y agoWhy are the YC total stats for all YC companies on the W2015 infographic? That seems out of scope. The percentages of companies with a female/black/Hispanic are slightly off. As worded, it should be calculated by (# W2015 companies with atleast 1 female/black/Hispanic founder) / (# W2015 companies). For companies w/ female founders, 25 / 114 = 21.93%, not 23%. Black: 9 / 114 = 7.89%, not 8.03% Hispanic: 6 / 114 = 5.26%, not 5.35%
- joshmlewis 12y agoYeah that was a bit confusing. They talked a little about this class but it was mostly about all of YC as a whole, I believe.
- katm 12y agoThanks for catching. Making a few updates to clarify.
- astrange 12y agoYour Hispanic founder graphic seems to be missing the flagpole!
- monsterix 12y agoAge of the eldest entrepreneur @YCcombinator = 66? I sure want to know more about this person, and their start_up! I'm a relatively older entrepreneur too, fall right on the right side of the median. Recently I had been been thinking of applying to YC. But couldn't convince myself for it, and my age was one of the reasons.
- hmate9 12y agoThat really shouldn't be an excuse. Go and apply! Nothing is stopping you and you'll never what could have heppened. Gl
- te 12y agoThis grabbed my attention, also. Anyone know of this entrepreneur and his/her start-up?
- bengali3 12y agowhats the downside to applying?
- justplay 12y agoplease go and apply. if you need inspiration check http://fundersandfounders.com/too-late-to-start-life-crisis/ http://fundersandfounders.com/too-late-to-start-life-crisis/
- monsterix 12y agoThis is great, thanks for the encouraging note!
- Booktrope 12y agoI'm the 66 year old founder, Ken Shear, and our company is Booktrope (my co-founders are 54 and 45). I've been around the block a few times but YC has still been the most valuable educational experience I've ever had. I can vouch for this, YC is no respecter of age, in the best sense. The partners might be quite a bit younger than I am, but years beyond me in experience of starting and growing a business so I've learned an enormous amount from talking with them and from their insights into how startups are done. For my own part, a while back I was working for a judge and one of his colleagues, amused or unhappy at something I'd done, asked me how old I was (in that tone, you know). I asked him, did he mean, intellectually, emotionally or chronologically? He wouldn't say, and neither would I. So, the other thing about YC is probably, there's incredible value to be gotten from it and it doesn't depend on your age, but on how you enjoy it.
- pyrrhotech 12y agoI think the rising age of founder trend is a good one. Probably means the snapchat/whatsapp/instagram gold mine is nearly dry and some actually difficult-to-implement and domain-knowledge requiring ideas are starting to come into focus again.
- mathgeek 12y agoIt could also be a sign of many different things. My "gut guess" is that founders with some startup experience that now are heading out on their own are being selected for.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- gabegottlieb 12y agoAnyone else surprised at the number of startups in this class? (114) How much individual attention can each startup get?
- salusinarduis 12y agoYC has a sharded structure now. Arguably startups now get more attention than in some of the earlier batches.
- jonlucc 12y agoCan you explain this a little more? Are there different groups where each group has a mentor or shared resources?
- salusinarduis 12y agoPrior to sharding all partners were responsible for keeping up with everyone in a batch. Now there are multiple groupings of partners which oversee a smaller subset. I'm not certain, but I'm sure partners are assigned based on their domain expertise. Though, I'm sure all partners are open to helping anyone in the batch if needed. Can anyone comment on this?
- srinivsn 12y agoWhat's the difference between B2B vs. Enterprise?
- fab1an 12y agoEnterprise is a subset of B2B cos. While this isn't an exact science and the very concept of 'Enterprise' has been disrupted by companies such as box.net, I would say that typically: Enterprise = B2B cos with annual contract values > $100k, which usually means a different sales model, too.
- bache 12y agoB2B would solve issue's for businesses of any size while enterprise is creating products for the fortune 500.
- mattmanser 12y agoEnterprise has nothing to do with only 500 companies in the US. There is no real difference. Though some might say if you charge thousands and have dedicated salespeople, you're enterprise, even if you sell to a 25 person architect firm. Sales force is definitely though of as enterprise. While basecamp or twilio is more B2B. It's fuzzy, if there even is a difference.
- vqc 12y agoNot sure, but it might be helpful to look at the most recent YC RFS: https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/ https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/ E.g., something that is vertical specific may be more "Enterprise" than B2B
- outericky 12y agoI would distinguish them as enterprise requires a top down sales approach, while B2B can be either, but more often is a bottom up approach.
- vrp101 12y agoThe SketchDeck link redirects to the page itself. I'm sure they would appreciate some YC traffic.
- thearn4 12y agoI'm interested to hear more about the one aerospace startup that they funded in this class.
- katm 12y agoThey haven't launched publicly yet. You'll hear about them soon.
- thearn4 12y agoExcellent. If we're talking civil aviation and space, it may be one of the hardest industries to disrupt thanks to regulatory capture (and a million other things), but from a technical standpoint there is a tremendous amount of room for improving the current state-of-the-art.
- vasilipupkin 12y agoso, invested a total of 101 million and current value of investments = 0.06 * 30 bln * dilution factor. So roughly speaking, current value = 300-400 mln ?
- robhunter 12y agoWhere do you get the 101 million from?
- vasilipupkin 12y ago120K * 842 companies
- someear 12y agowould be interesting to see similar stats for the groups that applied. Both along the company categories and the gender/race breakdown.
- hbhakhra 12y agoAlso how many total applications did they receive?
- ngoel36 12y agoWhich was the aerospace co?
- 32faction 12y agoId like to know more info about that aerospace startup.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- rubiquity 12y agoWould you be able to provide a breakdown on the industry of the companies beyond B2B, B2C, etc? I'm curious how many are in developer tooling, oil & gas and so on and so forth.
- mtviewdave 12y agoIt would be interesting to see a breakdown by founder team size.
- cllns 12y agoCompanies with a female founder: 25 (21.93%) Companies with a Black founder: 9 (7.89%) Companies with a Hispanic founder: 6 (5.26%) They should release the stats of the number of people overall, not the number of companies with at least one member who fits into one of those groups. For example, say X% of the people are female, etc.
- foobarqux 12y agoThat wouldn't serve their purposes.
- katm 12y agoWe've historically reported companies versus individuals, so we wanted to stay consistent. But that's fair -- we'll put it in those terms next time we release stats.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- xasos 12y agoDo you have historical data? It seems as if the number of minority founders is growing (which is awesome!)
- staunch 12y agoSam Altman wrote 8 months ago: > As a side note, even though it will break backwards compatibility, we are considering changing how we look at this to the percentage of all founders that are women instead of the percentage of companies with a female founder. http://blog.ycombinator.com/diversity-and-startups http://blog.ycombinator.com/diversity-and-startups After being told by dozens of people how obviously misleading this statistic is. It was beneath YC to ever release such a phony stat, but it's downright unethical to continue propagating it.
- wj 12y agoI'm sure you didn't mean it but your post comes across as entitled. YC has no obligation to share stats and just because you disagree with the methodology doesn't make them unethical.
- chadkruse 12y agoAnyone happen to know the other two nonprofits besides http://democracyos.org/ http://democracyos.org/ ?
- spcoll 12y agoNo stats for Asian founders? It would be interesting to see a complete breakdown of WC W15 entrepreneurs by ethnicity.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- jlhonora 12y agoWhy is that offensive? How would you phrase it correctly?
- mycroft-holmes 12y agoParent probably is looking for "African-American" even though they may not be African-American.
- whbk 12y agoYikes - actually I missed the 'founder' below the numbers, so I thought 'companies with a black' was the whole description. Nothing offensive about it as it's actually written, I just skipped my coffee this morning and now look like a jackass. Mea culpa :)
- jlhonora 12y agoThat's OK, I was utterly curious
- ojbyrne 12y agoIt is "Companies with a " (above) black " founder" (below). Though as I understand it, African-American is the most current terminology.
- jlhonora 12y agoWhich one is the Chilean company?
- lordnacho 12y agoIt would be great to have stats on the applicants as well. It would be good to know whether to bother applying given various info (single founder, no customers yet, sector, etc).
- kilovoltaire 12y agoWhat are the four $1B+ companies? I can think of AirBnB, Dropbox, Stripe, ...
- Alex3917 12y agoTwitch.
- dkyc 12y agoTechnically Twitch sold for $970m... Maybe he's referring to Quora (they joined YC late-stage)
- arasmussen 12y agoHeroku, maybe?
- dkyc 12y agoThey sold for roughly $250m to Salesforce in 2010.
- arasmussen 12y ago"[1] Including companies that have been acquired"
- netvarun 12y agoMachine Zone (YC W08) Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/07/16/newest-hit-game-maker-machine-zone-nears-3-billion-valuation/ http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/07/16/newest-hit-game-maker...
- ket 12y agoInstacart raised $210M [1] at a valuation of $2B+ [2,3]. Also see the WSJ's Billion Dollar Club [4] [1] http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1579091/000157909114000002/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1579091/0001579091140... [2] http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/05/instacart-2b-kleiner/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/05/instacart-2b-kleiner/ [3] http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/12/instacart-a-grocery-delivery-start-up-raises-220-million/?_r=0 http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/12/instacart-a-grocery... [4] http://graphics.wsj.com/billion-dollar-club/ http://graphics.wsj.com/billion-dollar-club/
- fsniper 12y agoWhich company is from Turkey?
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- michaelchisari 12y agoI applied with an entertainment (film) industry related startup, but looking at the company categories, it looks like that wasn't on the menu this time around. Always next time, though!
- mceoin 12y agoNo Australians huh? We'll have to do something about that!