
YC Tech Stacks - bootload
http://themacro.com/articles/2016/08/yc-tech-stacks/
======
sergiotapia
If you're interested in startup tech stacks, we have a lot of different ones
curated at StackShare.

[http://stackshare.io](http://stackshare.io)

Some well known startups are "verified" with a blue checkmark, which means
they update their tech stack themselves so look out for that.

~~~
pajop
btw -
[https://www.datanyze.com/domain/?tab=info&domain=stackshare....](https://www.datanyze.com/domain/?tab=info&domain=stackshare.io)

~~~
sergiotapia
It's asking me to create an account. Can you take a screenshot?

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pajop
here:
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cp-J9HdVUAAoeZl.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cp-J9HdVUAAoeZl.jpg:large)

------
overcast
So besides the boring stuff listed in this article, how about the database
servers and developer environments? The actual tech stack running the show.

~~~
ebbv
I'm not sure I would characterize this as boring stuff so much as only like a
third of the picture.

When the article was titled "tech stacks" I was hoping to learn about the
actual tech stacks, not just the front end stuff. Like what's actually
answering the HTTPS requests? nginx? Apache? Node? Passenger? Tomcat?

What's the DB system?

What OS?

Heck even from front end we're missing who's using Angular, who's using Ember,
who's using Bootstrap, etc.

I wouldn't have titled this "Tech Stacks". Maybe "marketing and analytics
software."

~~~
overcast
That's exactly what my point was. I was anticipating a bit more in depth
analysis beyond a few third party services everyone uses.

~~~
bootload
_" I was anticipating a bit more in depth analysis beyond a few third party
services everyone uses."_

Valid point, write something up. Submit it.

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ktamura
Some of the juxtapositions/language are bizarre.

>2\. Of the YC companies that use hosting providers, 55% use AWS, 13% use
Cloudflare and 6% use Rackspace.

Comparing Cloudflare and AWS? Where's GCP or Azure?

>3\. Of the YC companies that use a CDN, 68% use Amazon CloudFront, 7% use
Cloudflare and 5% use Fastly.

Okay, so there's a separate section for CDN...

>8\. Only 22% of YC sites use a third party CMS. Of those, 83% use WordPress.

"3rd party" CMS? As opposed to...a custom made web app?

>11\. In terms of installs, the most common Analytics providers are Google
Analytics (451), Google Universal Analytics (314), Mixpanel (183) and
Optimizely (129).

I thought Google Universal Analytics was an updated version of Google
Analytics.

That said, this kind of market research is incredibly valuable.

~~~
SLaber89
Hey, so i'll attempt to clear the air a bit. Didn't think this would trend
like it did..

Cloudflare - chalk this up as a mistake. I have a marketing background, so not
too well versed in the infrastructure space. I'll ask Macro to make an edit
for me :)

"As opposed to...a custom made web app?" \- correct.

Google Analytics vs Universal Analytics - Correct, Universal is an update, but
many still use GA standard. The GA # (451) is all encompassing, the GUA #
(314) is the subset of GA users that use the update.

Granted, there is much room for improvement in both the information given and
the semantics behind it, but I'm glad you enjoyed it. Thought it would be
interesting for people to see since a lot of this stuff usually operates
behind the black curtain.

~~~
gbrayut
Thanks for the writeup! I enjoyed reading it and comparing with some of our
vendor/stack choices.

------
westernmostcoy
_2\. Of the YC companies that use hosting providers, 55% use AWS, 13% use
Cloudflare and 6% use Rackspace._

Cloudflare is a CDN exclusively, right? Why are they counted among the hosting
providers and not with CDNs in the next line?

~~~
ebbv
Yeah CloudFlare is not a hosting provider, so that piece seems erroneous. They
are on the CDN line below, I just don't understand why they ended up on this
line. Maybe because people's DNS points at CloudFlare?

------
1123581321
83% WordPress usage among CMS users seems high, but 22% using a CMS at all
seems low. Presumably most using a CMS just want a blog and a few pages? Any
kind of complicated content structure goes straight to custom development?
Does this account for static generators like Jekyll or CMSes that don't
provide information about themselves?

~~~
netule
I would think that many of them don't expose plainly the fact that they're
powered by WordPress or only use it as a backend/authoring solution with a
custom frontend.

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thedrake
BuiltWith has a much more extensive list of not only YC stacks but several
curated lists. [https://trends.builtwith.com/tech-
reports](https://trends.builtwith.com/tech-reports)

the YC stack is here: [https://trends.builtwith.com/tech-
reports/Y-Combinator](https://trends.builtwith.com/tech-reports/Y-Combinator)

*click the All Technologies dropdown to see all the options

------
minimaxir
The chart at the bottom (now that it's fixed; thanks!), if you remove the
Google outliers, shows that there is little correlation between the market
share of a given SASS within its category and the number of YC startups that
use it.

As a result, the conclusion is that YC companies just use whatever the hell
they want, not what is "best."

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rezashirazian
_2\. Of the YC companies that use hosting providers, 55% use AWS, 13% use
Cloudflare and 6% use Rackspace._

No Azure? considering how much Microsoft gives away with their bizspark
program, this is surprising.

~~~
jmspring
I'd be curious why. If there are issues, happy to try and help out.

~~~
MatthewMcDonald
We tried to use Azure for a new system ~8 months ago (it's hard to pass up
that much money). Spinning up a vm with the image we needed and a static ip
was not possible with the GUI. The specific image we needed was only
accessible on the "new" portal, but a static IP could only be assigned from
the "old" portal. It's theoretically possible to set it up with PowerShell,
but after spending over a week of poring over outdated and incomplete
documentation and opening support tickets, we switched to AWS and had it
running in a few hours.

Even if we did get it to work, I'm not sure I would feel comfortable investing
in a platform where something as simple as "create a vm with this image and
assign a static ip" isn't straightforward. It could be better now, but for us
(and most other young startups) the time of our engineers is much more scarce
than hosting costs.

------
grape_
I ran a similar study a while back - I was curious to see if the YC incentives
for startups (Azure credits, Amazon credits, Digital Ocean credits, etc.) were
significantly swaying founders to use a technology stack.

You can find a quick analysis of registrars and DNS providers here -
[https://www.gra.pe/?p=77](https://www.gra.pe/?p=77)

You can find architecture analysis here -
[https://www.gra.pe/?p=36](https://www.gra.pe/?p=36)

Interesting stuff.

~~~
tedmiston
Is the most popular domain registrar among YC cos really GoDaddy?

This seems pretty unusual given industry trends over the past, 5+ years. Do
you separate GoDaddy resellers from GoDaddy direct?

Update: They are not separated.

> I see Namecheap come up in a lot of hackernews posts for recommended
> registrars. I’m assuming since Namecheap and many other popular startup-
> friendly registrars are both resellers of GoDaddy and eNom and are ICAAN
> accredited registrars, the WHOIS lookup may not reflect the proper registrar
> (i.e. they may show up as eNom instead of Namecheap).

I'm also surprised to see AWS Route 53 omitted as a registrar, and possibly as
a name service, unless that's what "Amazon" under DNS refers to.

Still this data is useful and nice to have as a point of reference.

~~~
manigandham
What is a "startup-friendly registrar"?

Godaddy has lots of annoying upsells in their checkout flow but they're cheap,
fast and work just fine as a registrar and DNS host.

------
pajop
comparing Datanyze | Stackshare.io | Builtwith.com

[https://www.datanyze.com/domain/?tab=info&domain=datanyze.co...](https://www.datanyze.com/domain/?tab=info&domain=datanyze.com)

[http://stackshare.io/datanyze/datanyze](http://stackshare.io/datanyze/datanyze)

[http://builtwith.com/datanyze.com](http://builtwith.com/datanyze.com)

------
serialpreneur
I don't see tech stacks here. Mostly adtech!

------
ruffrey
I was hoping it was a list of the tech stacks they used to build their
software, like Node.js, C, Clojure, Redis, etc

~~~
MichaelGG
Yeah PG should attempt to validate his claim that a better language is
actually an advantage. They should have enough data to draw some sort of
conclusions. Or be able to ask ex founders if they didn't collect it
beforehand. Of course all this compared against various success metrics.

Also good to know when people ended up switching stacks and for what reasons.

~~~
sotojuan
Good point. I don't know what PG considers a "better" language (aside from
Lisp), but I'd make a random guess and say that most YC companies are using
JavaScript, Ruby, Python, or Go for their backend.

~~~
geofft
All of those are basically Lisps if you squint hard enough. In particular,
they are much closer to Lisp than the two languages people were using for
Viaweb competitors at the time, namely C++ and Perl (according to the "Beating
the Averages" essay), and specifically the mid-'90s version of C++ and Perl.
Perl 5, released 7 months before Viaweb launched, added anonymous functions
(lambdas) and the ability to have variables that were references to variables.
Perl 5.004, released almost two years _later_ , added funcrefs, which made
anonymous functions useful. C++ technically let you define objects with
operator() all along, but there was no useful support until the STL, first
released less than a year before Viaweb launched. boost::function only showed
up in 2001, and native lambdas in 2011.

The curious thing is that, even so, none of those languages are really Lisps
at all. I think the lesson is not so much "Use Lisp" as "Use a programming
language that _actually has some basic features_ and which your tech folks are
familiar at", and most programming languages in the '90s didn't have what we'd
rightly consider basic features today.

See also [http://raganwald.com/2013/07/19/javascript-is-a-
lisp.html](http://raganwald.com/2013/07/19/javascript-is-a-lisp.html) .

~~~
MichaelGG
IIRC PG's main argument was that macros were so powerful he could write stuff
to write features vs writing features directly. Hence being super fast
compared to competition.

Even if that was accurate, I would guess with modern web apps or UIs there's
gonna be a large overhead that might wipe out any benefit. Using F# in a live
app, for instance -- sure, the main parts are nicer, shorter. And yes, it
makes me feel sane. But compared to the overall effort a company needs, I'm
not sure it matters in most cases.

------
caust1c
CloudFlare is not a hosting provider.

Interesting analysis nonetheless.

~~~
jacquesc
They provide a basic CDN hosting service, essentially asset caching.

~~~
corysama
On the line after talking about using CloudFlare as a hosting provider, they
separately talk about using CloudFlare as a CDN.

------
drewvolpe
"Only 21% of YC companies are A/B testing, but 93% use Optimizely"

This doesn't sound right. I wonder if the writer meant "93% of the 21% who do
A/B testing use Optimizely".

~~~
__derek__
That's how I read it: 21% A/B test, of whom 93% use Optimizely.

~~~
martin_
I agree, that said, I think it's hard to say the 79% _don't_ A/B test. Could
easily be homegrown, or round-robin based, or perhaps it was only included on
a specific page.

~~~
__derek__
Yes, especially given the zeitgeist around A/B testing, that seems unlikely.

------
zzleeper

        AdWords comes in fourth with 130
    

Any reason for this?

~~~
marcofloriano
I think it's because they mostly spend money on current customers not new
ones. To attract new customers they probably use another ways (like SEO, cold
call, and so on).

------
bluedino
>> Of the YC companies that use hosting providers, 55% use AWS, 13% use
Cloudflare and 6% use Rackspace.

No love for Linode?

~~~
ryanmerket
I'd love to see all the major cloud and hosting providers here.

------
pranaysharma
Why no one uses services from providers like Digital ocean and linode . They
are cheap and reliable?

~~~
grapehut
Both are great for hobby projects, and offer pretty great bang for buck, but
I'd never run consider running anything serious on either, let a lone a
business.

Some examples:

== Not pay bills (yeah, yeah, I should check my email more often when a credit
card expires) ===

* Digital Ocean: All is working, then one day they flip the switch and shut down your servers and delete the backups (that you paid for)

* AWS: Has a super reasonable policy, first by shutting down the servers so you know

* Linode: Not sure

== Get DDoSd ==

* Digital Ocean: 24 hour blackhole, zero support or human contact in this time

* AWS: Servers kept alive, got some engineering assistance

* Linode: 24 (?) hour blackhole, a bit of really bad support

== Physical Server Upgrades ==

* Digital Ocean: Not bad

* AWS: Amazing. Zero downtime, I have 4 year uptime on many servers

* Linode: Botched my servers, more times than I can count. Even had support reboot the WRONG servers of mine when I was talking with them

== Bandwidth ===

* Digital Ocean: shitty and cheap

* AWS: Amazing and stupidly expensive

* Linode: Decent and cheap

I could go on. If it was a hobby project, I'd probably just use Digital Ocean
because of their cheap prices and sleek control panel. (Or actually I'd use
vultr)

But for anything serious where I have a budget for servers, you'd be crazy to
use anything about AWS or Google Cloud

~~~
tedmiston
> * AWS: Servers kept alive, got some engineering assistance

This depends a lot on what level of customer you are.

------
buro9
Instead of scraping the sites and trying to guess what YC companies are
using...

Perhaps just ask them?

Surely every YC company would answer, or at least enough to make the
information more valuable than a set of guesses.

Additionally, it would be good to know when YC companies choose other YC
company products based on incentives offered (it's free to other alumni), as
this disclosure allows others to evaluate whether the choice to use a product
was because it was the best product for that task or was potentially skewed by
the incentive offered.

------
wslh
It would be interesting to have also information about the frontend. Are they
using Bootstrap/Foundation/etc? What other JS libs are they using for the
presentation layer?

~~~
tedmiston
You can get that info one by one with their Chrome extension. Front end
framework detection was not perfect in the limited ~10 startups I examined.

------
gk1
LinkedIn ads don't have tracking scripts or pixels, so not sure how they're
getting the number for that. Certainly can't be accurate.

~~~
blahi
They don't?

------
ggiaco
You can also see a lot of this data over at Siftery, with much of it verified
first-hand by the companies themselves
([https://siftery.com/groups/y-combinator-
portfolio](https://siftery.com/groups/y-combinator-portfolio))

------
base
Advertising technologies I'm almost sure it's wrong. How do you know from the
javascript used if the company uses Adwords? My company uses adwords
extensively and all the events and conversions are passed using Google
Analytics and the Adwords API.

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greyskull
Why is AWS so popular? I don't mean that as a question with pretense, just
genuinely curious.

~~~
bjterry
Amazon gives away a silly amount of free AWS credits to some accelerator
programs. At 500 Startups I think they give you $50,000 or $100,000 in credits
that expire after a couple years. I assume they do the same for YC. Obviously
most companies can't even use more than a tiny fraction of that.

~~~
tedmiston
Correct.

Either it expires after a certain time period, IIRC 2? years, or your startup
takes off and you burn through the rest quickly.

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mikeboydbrowne
None of these numbers point to a monopoly on the bizdev/marketing side - is
that due to the tools/players being new (I consolidated) or is it likely to
stay this fragmented?

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danbmil99
Still waiting for info about actual tech stacks.

------
spydertennis
some good data on best in class saas

