
YC Summer 2017 Stats - janober
https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-summer-2017-stats/
======
wenbin
It would be great if it shows

* How many companies with only a single founder?

* How many companies are founded by people who are not native english speaker? I mean, an entire non english speaker team, e.g., all of them were born in Russia or China and came to US in a "late" age (e.g., after 22), instead of Canada, UK etc.

It would be more interesting if we can see a YC-funded company that is founded
by a single founder who is not a native English speaker and came to US after
22 and he/she is now over 35 :) This somehow makes the game harder to play,
but it would be challenging and fun and inspiring :)

The stereotype of a YC company is still multi-founder + at least one native
english speaker + young. It will be certainly an outlier of outlier if there's
ever a YC company that sets an inspiring example that single founder + non
native english speaker + "old" can be accepted to YC and can succeed. Or we
may need a YC-clone that is started in non-english-speaking countries or is
started by a first-generation non-native-english-speaker immigrant in US.

~~~
katm
There are 18 companies with a solo founder in this batch.

~~~
moflome
Would also appreciate insights into current average revenue, ideally by
company category. Thanks.

------
koolba
Interesting stats. I don't get this section though:

    
    
        UNDERREPRESENTED FOUNDERS
        S17 Female founders: 35 (12% of all S17 founders)
        S17 Applicants who were female: 14%
        S17 Companies with a female founder: 27 (21% of the batch)
        S17 Applications with a female founder: 22%
        
        S17 Black founders: 14 (4.76% of S17 founders)
        S17 Companies with a Black/Af-Am founder: 8 (6.25% of the batch)
        
        S17 Hispanic/Latinx founders: 13 (4.42% of S17 founders)
        S17 Companies with a Hispanic/Latinx founder: 7 (5.47% of the batch)
    

For females the percentage that were accepted is pretty close to the
percentage that applied (21% vs 22%). So it seems like it would represent the
applicant set.

Couple questions come to mind:

* For the black and hispanic stats, what were the percentage of the total applicants?

* Does the acceptance rate align with the application rate?

* Are the "% Applications with a ..." based on those that arrived at the office for an interview or total number of submissions?

* Are the stats self reported and if so optional or mandatory, or does someone at YC look at people to bucketize them?

~~~
katm
* We ask for gender on our applications, but we haven't asked for race/ethnicity, which is why we don't have the answer to your first question.

* We see that it does for female founders.

* Total number of submissions

* Gender is reported in the applications. We asked founders in the batch to self-report for race/ethnicity.

~~~
sachinag
Why ask for gender but not race/ethnicity?

~~~
keerthiko
This is an excellent question. If I were running the applications I might have
done the same (ask gender but not race/ethnicity), because gender just feels
more generally okay to ask. But if the purpose of asking is for nothing more
than stats recording, then why not ask ethnicity as well?

I think it lies in that people fear being biased _against_ for reporting their
ethnicity, either via affirmative action (white/asian) or racism (everyone
else).

~~~
ringaroundthetx
> I think it lies in that people fear being biased against for reporting their
> ethnicity, either via affirmative action (white/asian) or racism (everyone
> else).

Hm, two flaws about that dichotomy:

1) Many people that aren't white or asian also feel that affirmative action is
a bias against their actual ability to contribute to society. For example, not
everyone would see getting into YC as a monumental achievement, but even if
they did the idea that it would be belittled because of a perception that
their skin tone filled a quote is the same being biased against.

2) Many people call this racism as well. In this context, it would primarily
be a reference to an institutionalized circumstance.

------
Cyph0n
Interesting! I would love to see more detailed stats on the universities of
accepted YC applicants.

* What proportion are from international universities (i.e., not the US)?

* What percentage of founders graduated from top 10 universities? Top 100?

* How many founders are PhD holders? How about MS? MBA?

~~~
nukdf
That's a piece of data that I'd really like to see also =]

------
buro9
It would be great if the underrepresentation stats also included class
distinctions, or at least economic backgrounds.

~~~
katm
Another thing I've been curious about is how many of the founders had student
loans when they started the company. I'd bet that student loans hold a lot of
people back. I just paid mine off last year.

~~~
adventured
Student loans and health factors (specifically complications around health
insurance or existing healthcare costs). Health considerations can be a
massive issue when trying to do a start-up.

At 30-40 years old (with the average age around 30, I imagine there are plenty
of candidates between 30-40), some small percentage of people are likely to be
running into their first health problems or concerns.

Financially speaking, the only thing more ridiculous than the cost of
education, is the cost of healthcare. If you need health insurance to cover a
prescription that costs a thousand dollars per month, you're naturally going
to have serious concerns about leaving the job that provides that insurance.

~~~
aianus
It's a rather marginal difference when you're already forgoing $13k a month or
more in salary to be an entrepreneur instead of a bigco developer, no?

Like, you'd just have to work a month or two extra before quitting to cover a
year of prescriptions.

~~~
edwhitesell
If you have a need for a prescription with costs in that range, the
prescription itself is likely a minimal cost in the whole scheme of healthcare
costs you have.

Specialists usually charge significantly more than primary care physicians and
an unforseen trip to the ER can easily cost $20k. It's not as simple as
working an extra month or two.

The risks of not having insurance are utterly terrible financial handcuffs.
I'm just starting down the path of cancer treatments, the coverages (or lack
thereof) and costs are eye-opening, and scary.

------
capocannoniere
> 10 YC alum are valued at over $1B and 64 YC alum are valued at over $100M.

Impressive. But off the top of my head I can count a few more than 10 YC
companies valued at $1B or more:

1) Airbnb

2) Quora

3) Stripe

4) Dropbox

5) Instacart

6) Coinbase

7) Reddit

8) Cruise

9) Twitch

10) Gusto

11) Zenefits

12) Docker

13) Machine Zone

And a few more that are pretty close to $1B

~~~
Cyph0n
Are you sure about Reddit, Quora, Docker, and Twitch?

Edit:

> But off the top of my head I can count a few more than 10 billion-dollar
> companies funded by YC.

I thought you were listing 10B+ companies.

~~~
capocannoniere
Reddit raised $200 million in funding and is now valued at $1.8 billion [1]

Q&A app Quora valued around $1.8 billion in $85 million fundraise [2]

Docker Is Raising Funding at $1.3B Valuation [3]

Twitch was acquired by $970M, so I guess not quite $1B.

[1] [https://www.recode.net/2017/7/31/16037126/reddit-
funding-200...](https://www.recode.net/2017/7/31/16037126/reddit-
funding-200-million-valuation-steve-huffman-alexis-ohanian)

[2]
[https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/21/uniquorn/](https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/21/uniquorn/)

[3]
[http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/10/docke...](http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/10/docker-
is-raising-funding-at-1-3b-valuation/)

~~~
Cyph0n
See my edit above. Your wording could be better.

~~~
capocannoniere
You're right. Fixed

------
nnd
>> Avg age of S17 founders: 29.5

So much for a stereotype of prodigy college dropout.

------
Grustaf
So on average YC companies have raised some 10 m, but what is the median?
Similarly to total valuation, this number is probably heavily skewed by a few
whales.

------
jv22222
Do people over the age of 40 ever get in to YC?

~~~
nl
In 2016 18% of YC founders were 40+

[https://mixpanel.com/blog/2016/05/18/getting-accepted-
into-y...](https://mixpanel.com/blog/2016/05/18/getting-accepted-into-y-
combinator/)

~~~
Powerofmene
It would be interesting to know how many founders were over 40 in S17. It
would also be interesting to see if YC has a sense of any difficulties that
older founding teams experience in attracting VC funding.

------
d--b
What would be interesting is to look at the distribution of YC's capital over
the companies it owns shares of. Is it mostly concentrated in the very big
ones? Or is the number of less-than-100m companies large enough that they make
up a decent part of YC's total assets.

------
forgotmysn
It's cool that this batch is so international. I'm surprised to see companies
from that many different regions. That said, I'm also really surprised, given
how international this batch is, that there isn't a single Chinese company.

~~~
avip
Possible reasons other than "just so happened":

* VC money is more accessible for Chinese startups in China

* Chinese startups are mostly targeting local market

* Visa issues?

(these are all wild guesses)

~~~
vit05
I agree with these suggestions. Perhaps, I would add the little knowledge
about Chinese legislation and the market, which is quite different from other
parts of the world. But I think it would be interesting, thinking
strategically, YC attracts more Chinese and thus better know the market.

------
avip
Would have been interesting to have an _overrepresented_ section as well (if
exists).

~~~
coolswan
You mean white males?

------
quadcore
I have a side question for YC. You often mention that one of the main reasons
for a startup to fail is founders dispute. But that applies to you too: you
don't know the founders before accepting them. How do you trust the founders
so fast? In other words, do you invest in companies in which you wouldn't want
to be a founder? I just want to know more about _trust_ , where it matters,
where it doesn't maybe, what to look for, that kind of stuff. Sorry if that's
irrelevant here.

~~~
hkmurakami
Most accelerators use "how long have you known each other" and "have you
worked together before" as proxies for this.

------
philipjoubert
Does anyone know which South Africa startup was in this batch?

~~~
vegbrasil
I'm curious about the brazilian one.

~~~
katm
The Brazilian company is bxblue.
[https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/18/bxblue/](https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/18/bxblue/)

~~~
fernandotakai
fintech is getting insanely huge in brazil right now.

~~~
coolswan
Agreed. Fintech is huge in all growing emerging markets, especially those
driven still on top of cash. No credit card infrastructure to mess with - move
right onto digital wallets. China is the obvious example.

~~~
vit05
I do not think the opportunity in Brazil, for fintechs, is about people using
cash. More than 100 million have a bank account, with a card, and more than 70
million have a credit card[0]. Almost every place you go you could use a
credit card to pay, including churches and street vendors.

But, is too expensive and too much bureaucracy to take a loan. Big Banks is
one of the sectors that most profits in Brasil[1], so they do not care so much
about small and personal loans. Or loans to small companies. And the
legislation sucks too, politicians have passed a new law that will make even
harder to make Angel Investments[2]. Is too risky and expensive for everyone
that want to loan money to people. Loan money to government is more profitable
and almost without risk to Big Banks and mutual funds. So, there is a huge
opportunity to disrupt this.

[1][http://www.infomoney.com.br/mercados/acoes-e-
indices/noticia...](http://www.infomoney.com.br/mercados/acoes-e-
indices/noticia/6463722/empresas-que-mais-lucraram-trimestre-2017) (
portuguese) [2][http://convergecom.com.br/tiinside/21/07/2017/investidor-
anj...](http://convergecom.com.br/tiinside/21/07/2017/investidor-anjo-deve-
pagar-imposto-de-renda/)

------
socrates1998
What is the overall rate of return for all the companies?

I would like to see how much money was invested total into the companies and
how much they all valued in total today.

~~~
tim333
Well it says $13bn invested, $85bn valuation today. It might be interesting to
break that down by year though. The recent investments won't really have had
time to play out.

~~~
zodiac
It's 13bn raised by alums among all investors, not just yc.

~~~
socrates1998
Yeah, that was my point. 85bn in value on 13bn invested is impressive, but
that might not include other money.

It seems like they left out "total money invested" to make the return sound a
little better.

------
lukasm
I'd be much more interesting to see what is the expected value, median and
average for the founder.

------
haaen
Does anyone know which Dutch startup is in this batch?

~~~
coolswan
PeerGrade - [https://www.peergrade.io/blog/peergrade-goes-y-
combinator/](https://www.peergrade.io/blog/peergrade-goes-y-combinator/)

~~~
Grustaf
They are Danish

------
fgpwd
Does anyone know the total number of applicants?

------
jaypaulynice
I'm very curious about the success rate of YC companies when it comes to
race/gender...any data regarding that?

------
bbd
it will be great to see some cohort analysis for each batch.

------
benjaminsuch
Germany where?

------
toephu2
What evidence is there that proves an equal percentage of every race and
gender leads to a more profitable company (or has a higher chance of a
successful exit)?*

*Because I assume that by listing "UNDERREPRESENTED FOUNDERS" YC wishes there were 50% female founders and 50% male founders? And what about the racial makeup of founders? Is the ideal world for YC a racial make up of 20% white, 20% black, 20% asian, 20% middle eastern, and 20% other?

------
csomar
Okay, I might have a bit of a hot head but: Isn't $85bn total market cap a
sign of failure? Especially considering that this includes companies that have
valuations because they "just raised money on high cap".

Given that the valley now has multiple companies with $500bn+ market cap; and
in the "still raising money" valuation there are companies with $50-100bn
valuation; it seems to me that $85bn is rather very small.

Or more like YC has worked well for the average founder but sucked at picking
even one of the bigger winners?

~~~
sillysaurus3
(I didn't downvote.) Winners take a long time to develop. YC's pipeline makes
it likely that the new ones will go through it. It's probably more likely now
than in 2008, meaning a YC applicant today might be that 500bn company in 10
years.

~~~
csomar
Yeah, I'm not sure why anyone would down vote that. Own a stake in YC?

~~~
jacquesm
Maybe because $85B is a lot of dough regardless of whether or not there are
larger entities?

~~~
csomar
That's not my point. My point is YC is getting top attention and has a big
(the biggest?) name in Early stage funding. That doesn't seem to translate to
being a leader in picking winners though.

~~~
jacquesm
It doesn't have to! All they need to do is do well enough that they can
continue to attract new talent and be founder friendly, and do this for the
largest talent pool.

And this is what seems to be the case, there is no other program that has
launched as many start-ups as YC has done and there is no other program that
has done this for as many founders as YC has done. The network effects of that
are tremendous.

------
rmena123
I can bet, if YC had the stats for race/ethnicity amount who applied, we would
be shocked of the amount of blacks or Latinos who were never accepted.
Especially from the early days.

Count me and a few other Hispanics who never have been accepted. The only time
its cared about is after the fact and just for show purposes like this.

On a side Note: Yc doesn't understand people like me will never have the
resume they are looking for, but have the talent and drive. I could game the
application process to get accepted. Because we know what you accept and its
not just a race issue.

~~~
mwseibel
If you truly believe this than I am sorry. If you are interested - feel free
to email me: michael@ycombinator.com

~~~
rmena123
I'll email you sometime and I appreciate the response.

Just to set my example, how many staff at YC are black or Hispanic in the list
below? I find it odd considering the amount of population of these groups in
the USA alone. Not many startups cater to this demographic, if they aren't
being accepted.

[http://www.ycombinator.com/people/](http://www.ycombinator.com/people/)

~~~
jacquesm
You may have a point. The decision of who to fund may rely in part on seeking
people similar to oneself and if the demographics of the applicant pool are
not reflected in the staff of YC it may skew the outcome against minorities.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Why does the concept of _free association_ stop, and the and the chilling
effect of _we can 't be seen together without a representatives from every
phenotype_ begin?

When do we start to demand that Latino rap groups (eg. Cypress Hill) hire to
meet diversity quotas?

~~~
jacquesm
It stops when you're large enough that statistically speaking you should have
people of all walks of life in your portfolio. If you then don't that's proof
that there is some kind of bias at work.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
How do we determine whether the bias is caused by the employer or whether by
the applicants?

Anyway, I'll agree that we need to have this conversation, and we need to work
out some way of applying some rules that seem somewhat fair, and that the
issues should be dealt with on all fronts.

We, in Australia anyway, already have varying rules / laws / regulations that
apply to a workplace depending on the number of employees and / or revenue. So
it would seem to make sense that _diversity quotas_ would be applied in a
similar fashion. I mean if we, as a society, believe that's necessary, which
does appear to be the direction we're headed.

I guess _I_ tend to recoil from the idea because I work in heavy steel
fabrication and construction. The job roles in this industry tend to be _very
traditional_ with regard to gender. Women work the administrative side, men do
all the dangerous / dirty / heavy / hot / long hours work. And as far as I can
tell everyone is okay with that.

Until _I see_ diversity quotas applied in the job roles that kill and injure
men at work it's a little hard for me to take serious this ... squabbling ...
in tech industry.

What might be best is, since this doesn't really involve me, as in: I don't
work in the hotbed-tech-industry-in-a-large-city, I might just stay out of the
conversation.

~~~
jacquesm
> Until I see diversity quotas applied in the job roles that kill and injure
> men at work it's a little hard for me to take serious this ... squabbling
> ... in tech industry.

That argument was beaten to death years ago. The basic outcome is this: you
should allow people to work where they want to work, anything else is
conscription (the Soviets tried this with predictable effects). So unless you
are willing to _force_ people to work in jobs they don't want diversity won't
be 100% across all kinds of jobs simply because people self select for the
kind of jobs they feel they can do and which will not lead to them getting
injured or killed on the job in higher numbers than those that are physically
more suited to doing that work.

So the diversity conversation will center on those professions where such
innate differences won't make a difference. Even so there are women who do
traditional 'mens' jobs and do them well but they are rather the exception
than the rule.

And very few of those 'mens' jobs are really in that category, most of the
time it is simply tradition rather than some actual basis in fact. Though I'll
definitely yield to there being some of those in the steel industry, I've
worked near two steel plants (IJmuiden and Sault Ste Marie) and know many
steelworkers and would definitely not see them being replaced by females (or
less bulky men) any time soon.

[https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/apr/26/meet-
wo...](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/apr/26/meet-women-doing-
mens-work)

That said I do know a female welder and there are plenty of women in
construction who don't care about danger (which should be avoided anyway),
dirt or heat and for 'heavy' we have cranes.

~~~
belorn
You can achieve gender quotas without conscription. For example, the state
could institute a policy to favor bids from companies with no gender
segregation. No one would force women to work at a construction companies, but
those companies would suddenly feel a major pressure to get female employees.
Similar, the government has multiple dangerous / dirty / heavy / hot / long
hours work that they sub contract, and all those could get the same treatment.

You could also do the reverse and encourage men to get into more safe work,
while freeing up competent women to go into typical male professions. Both
psychology and veterinarian have both around 10 female applicants per male,
and the median school grades needed for both is very high. 40% of those women
could easy be denied a spot in those female dominated professions in favor of
gender diversity, and could then go into tech. It would be very interesting if
a large veterinarian company and IT company would join in a pledge to hire one
minority gender employee if the other did so. A "fair trade" in the area of
social activism.

