
Y Combinator Companies - kenbaylor
http://www.ycombinator.com/companies/
======
koolba
If anyone wants the data in JSON format, the page loads it via the following
API call:
[https://api.ycombinator.com/companies/export.json](https://api.ycombinator.com/companies/export.json)

~~~
fitzwatermellow
Thnx ;)

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visakanv
How dare you express appreciation in an abbreviated manner!

~~~
teach
It's one of the social norms on HackerNews that "low-value" comments like
"Love it! Thanks!" and "good job" are discouraged. Although such comments are
polite to the commenter, they add nothing but noise for all the other readers
of the thread.

Instead, it seems to be preferred that you simply upvote the comment instead
of replying.

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jedc
Quick analysis:

1297 YC companies (from here:
[http://www.ycombinator.com/press/](http://www.ycombinator.com/press/))

860 YC companies listed as either active or acquired (from here:
[http://www.ycombinator.com/companies/](http://www.ycombinator.com/companies/))

= 33% failure rate

That's a lot higher than I would have expected, to be honest.

~~~
dsugarman
33% is way too low as a failure rate for pre-seed startups. I think that
number may be around what you would expect for Series A startups. The data is
skewed because class sizes have grown over time so the data is skewed towards
younger companies.

~~~
joncalhoun
Another factor is that it takes some time for a company to admit it failed,
and everyone's opinion of "failed" is different. I suspect the actual number
is higher, especially from an investors perspective.

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nl
_If you can just avoid dying, you get rich. That sounds like a joke, but it 's
actually a pretty good description of what happens in a typical startup._

[http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html)

~~~
jdoliner
Unfortunately many only prolong their dying, not avoid it.

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reagan83
Please fix the first link to 1000memories - it links to a spam site.

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idlewords
For those who don't know, 1000memories was a service meant to allow people to
create a "permanent" online memorial to loved ones who had died. Their CEO
leaned hard on me to use them after I complained on my blog about the shabby
business practices of a competitor, Legacy.com, when my best friend died.

Stay classy, YC. I'm sure it would have cost a fortune to keep the domain up.

~~~
jacquesm
Ugh. Given the nature of the site that is particularly galling. But it's done,
I don't think there is any way to reverse this.

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nickpsecurity
Like so...

[https://web.archive.org/web/20110205090306/http://1000memori...](https://web.archive.org/web/20110205090306/http://1000memories.com/)

This one might be tougher than usual since the functionality that's very
visible is probably dead whereas the links on the bottom containing useful
info are _tiny_ and look like the background. You at least see the right site,
though.

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ph0rque
I may be biased, but I think YC Fellowship companies should be on that list,
too :)

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revelation
Some of these are clearly now defunct and instead link to malware popup sites.
(The first one in the list in fact, 1000Memories)

If you want to ruin your SEO, I assume this is a good idea.

(I figure there is enough data here to make a fun "acquired/defunct/soldiering
on" guessing game?)

Also, at least one of these startups has gone full circle, started failed
stopped and was then reborn as a blog on entrepreneurship:

[http://www.souper.me/?page_id=144](http://www.souper.me/?page_id=144)

~~~
bpicolo
Yeah, OpenDNS shut down that one for me as well.

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benhamner
I scraped a CSV version of the data & made a graph of the verticals by batch:
[https://www.kaggle.com/benhamner/y-combinator-
companies](https://www.kaggle.com/benhamner/y-combinator-companies)

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bedros
here's my problem and why I can't fit in either YC batch or YC Fellowship.

18 months ago, a small business owner asked me to solve a problem they have.
They said they tried many existing solutions, and none helped. So, it turned
out, it's the same problem I'm trying to solve for last 8 years, for my
personal use; was put on the back burner, and did not think it has a big
business potential. So, I've already spent so much time finding a solution in
the past, and did not take me much time to find a solution to fit their needs.

fast forward till today, and I got alpha quality solution; working on it over
the weekends. while working full time to pay mortgage and feed my family.

if I apply to YC, it means I have to quit my job, move to silicon valley (I
live in SoCal) and moving away from my newborn baby, which is not practical,
since we don't have family to help with the baby. and my wife on her own
cannot take care of the baby, get groceries, do the house stuff.

if I apply to YC fellowship, there's not enough fund to justify quitting my
full time job and focus on this company.

My only option seems to be to keep working on this product for next 6 months,
putting 10-20 hrs over the weekend, and have slow progress.

I've talked to several businesses and they all agreed, they have the same
problem, and they want solution right now, and willing to pay $200 to $2000
per month depending on features.

I wish there's a hybrid option, something like investment of 80K for 2-3%
(similar to Fellowship, but more funds) and requirement to fly once a week to
meet with YC partners and report on progress.

~~~
jconley
If you are a software developer, the risk of committing to one year (three
months at least partially in Mountain View) doesn't sound that scary to me. If
you leave on good terms with your current employer you could probably just get
your job back if you failed at your startup.

It sounds like you have a great potential business. The size of the
addressable market will determine whether or not you could have a startup [0]
as defined by PG. Generally speaking, YC only wants to fund startups in their
main program, which would be the one that would give you enough capital to
actually make a run at it.

When we did YC (S13) we had three cofounders that all had families and single
incomes. We made it work. We rented an apartment and lived/worked together for
a few days during the week, and returned to our home offices the rest of the
time. You could find a room to rent somewhere if you are a solo founder. Some
used credit cards to float things. You'll have to get uncomfortable...

Part of doing a startup is about sacrificing bits of your life for your
business. Investors (including YC) want to make sure you are all-in. I would
be surprised if you would be able to raise any capital from experienced
startup investors while working part-time on the project. They typically want
you to have already dove into the deep end.

If you don't have a startup on your hands, but instead have a great small
business, there's nothing to be ashamed of there and you can probably find
some investment from local high net worth investors if you do some networking.
You can test that with pre-orders or LOI's or something of that sort. However,
those investments are probably going to be more "Shark Tank," full of onerous
terms and potentially much more dilution for you as a founder.

[0]:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html)

~~~
vertex-four
> If you are a software developer, the risk of committing to one year (three
> months at least partially in Mountain View) doesn't sound that scary to me.

That assumes that they have enough savings to look after their family until
they're making enough profit to take a reasonable salary.

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wasd
Dear YC, please include real estate as a category. You have many fine
companies in this space.

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minimaxir
This list is misleading because it only includes _active_ companies, and
doesn't include companies which have exited/died. (Contrast with
[http://yclist.com](http://yclist.com))

For example, filtering on s2006 only returns Scribd, but as YClist shows,
there are 9 other startups in that batch.

~~~
Finbarr
We just deployed a change that will show acquired companies too.

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em500
Can you deploy another change that will show dead companies too?

If you think there is more interest in non-dead companies, you could add an
extra filter/selection box.

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mikeleeorg
Will Imagine K12 companies be added to the list as well?

[http://www.imaginek12.com/all-
ik12-startups.html](http://www.imaginek12.com/all-ik12-startups.html)

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Taylor_OD
It's crazy how many of these websites dont even work anymore.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
Considering, what, 90% of start-ups fail in the first 5 years (80% in the
first year)* I'm actually surprised a lot more are not dead. Though 5 years
haven't passed for most of these so maybe there will be significantly more
dead _soon_.

*if I remember the statistic correctly

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koolba
I don't see a bunch of well known YC companies here such as Heroku and Reddit.
What's the criteria for this list?

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minimaxir
Both Heroku and Reddit exited: see my comment.

~~~
koolba
Ah didn't see that when I started writing. So this has neither successful
exits that continue to operate nor unsuccessful ones that exited to the
graveyard?

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earlyriser
I created this to get news from YC companies:

[http://techtronium.com/posts?tag=Y+Combinator](http://techtronium.com/posts?tag=Y+Combinator)

It doesn't include all of them, just those with a blog feed.

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jedc
Yay! I can finally make sure Seed-DB data is 100% correct (rather than 95%
correct) - [http://www.seed-
db.com/accelerators/view?acceleratorid=1011](http://www.seed-
db.com/accelerators/view?acceleratorid=1011)

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oliland
Seems biased to sort alphabetically. I clicked away without ever reaching B!

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sinzone
Great tool. Would be cool to see where these companies are now. Perhaps adding
another columns and filter to get Status info: Acquired/Dead/IPO/Active.

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Taylor_OD
Anyone checked out pantelligent? Seems silly but who knows?

[https://www.pantelligent.com/](https://www.pantelligent.com/)

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lisper
There are at least three companies missing from this list: YumDots,
MightyQuiz, and Bushido, all from 2008 or so.

~~~
jayjay71
Companies that shut down aren't included in this list.

~~~
lisper
Ah, that makes sense. (Should have realized that. Frogmetrics is gone too.)

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tedmiston
Any chance of adding YC Fellowship companies?

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thejacenxpress
soylent.com has been the new address for a while, may want to update that from
soylent.me

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ishener
This list of useless startups is the reason why we haven't cured cancer, or
eradicated famine yet.

