

2 Months Out, 74% of Latest Y Combinator Class Funded or Profitable - jfornear
http://gigaom.com/2010/05/21/2-months-out-74-of-latest-y-combinator-class-funded-or-profitable/

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carbocation
Hmm, this 74% stat is directly conflating funding and profit; it's a
conflation that doesn't seem to make sense to me, as I really only care about
the profit side of the equation. If you suppose that profit increases
monotonically, this title hints at tremendous success - but I don't make that
assumption. I'd be more interested to know the medium-to-long-term success -
say, profitability at 12 months, or 24.

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pg
The similarity between the two is clear when you're running an early stage
startup: being either funded or profitable means you are not imminently going
to run out of money. And since that is usually the main thing you're worried
about in a startup 6 months old, that is an important similarity.

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carbocation
Aha - I think I follow. I thought the 74% was an attempt to inform us about
the startups. In a sense, it's not - it's telling us more about YC and its
ability to pick and/or guide startups such that they don't quickly crash and
burn. Thank you; that makes more sense, now.

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alain94040
It means that 74% of the graduating class is alive and healthy, at least for a
while. Don't try to read more than that into it.

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carbocation
No, that simply brings me back to wanting to see longer-term outcomes.
However, so far, so good!

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mikeryan
What percentage are actually profitable?

Don't get me wrong the 74% is impressive, but I'd expect a large percentage of
YC projects to get additional funding. They've already cleared a bunch of
hurdles and have a strong team backing them.

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pg
7 out of 27, so 26%. Bear in mind that at this stage most that are profitable
are only barely so.

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samt
does "profitable" mean "paying the $20/mo to slicehost" as some people around
here seem to think? or, paying the founders a ramen wage?

Edit: nm, I see the answer below.

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fleaflicker
Makes for a great headline but it's actually not difficult to achieve when you
have no employees, no office space and your product is a webapp (hosting costs
are a few hundred dollars per month at most).

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pg
The biggest cost tends to be the founders' living expenses. If they're young,
that can be low. But it is not a trivial matter to reach this threshold after
6 months. Viaweb didn't.

