
YC Top Companies List - sus_007
https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-top-companies-list-2018/
======
aston
The distribution by batch is pretty interesting:

    
    
       S2011 10
       W2012 10
       S2012 9
       S2014 7
       W2013 7
       S2013 6
       W2016 6
       W2015 6
       S2016 5
       W2014 5
       S2010 4
       S2015 4
       W2011 4
       S2009 3
       W2008 2
       W2007 2
       W2017 2
       S2006 2
       W2009 1
       W2018 1
       W2010 1
       S2008 1
       S2005 1
       S2007 1
    

The top three batches were consecutive starting from summer 2011 through
summer of 2012. That period happens to also be when the seed and venture
capital ecosystem started its recovery from the 2008 crisis [0].

What I wonder is, which way does the arrow of causation point? Did the success
of these companies lift the entire ecosystem? Or were macroeconomic factors
the dominant driver of capital entering this market, and those three batches
happened to benefit?

edit: There's another possibility here, which is that there are two curves
that may have maximized for companies around that time period. The first is
the batch size, which has increased from ~10 companies to ~100 over the years.
And the other curve is that companies take something like 5-10 years to
mature. Maybe it's just that the companies of that vintage are just old enough
to be really valuable, and that there were enough companies in the batch to
push them to the top of this ranking.

My money is on macro effects, though.

[0] [https://medium.com/the-mission/state-of-seed-investing-
in-20...](https://medium.com/the-mission/state-of-seed-investing-
in-2018-25eb28ac0e93)

~~~
tedmiston
Sorted by time earliest to latest also looks interesting.

    
    
       S2005 1
       S2006 2
       S2007 1
       W2007 2
       S2008 1
       W2008 2
       S2009 3
       W2009 1
       S2010 4
       W2010 1
       S2011 10
       W2011 4
       S2012 9
       W2012 10
       S2013 6
       W2013 7
       S2014 7
       W2014 5
       S2015 4
       W2015 6
       S2016 5
       W2016 6
       W2017 2
       W2018 1
    

Visualized:

    
    
       S2005 *
       S2006 **
       S2007 *
       W2007 **
       S2008 *
       W2008 **
       S2009 ***
       W2009 *
       S2010 ****
       W2010 *
       S2011 **********
       W2011 ****
       S2012 *********
       W2012 **********
       S2013 ******
       W2013 *******
       S2014 *******
       W2014 *****
       S2015 ****
       W2015 ******
       S2016 *****
       W2016 ******
       W2017 **
       W2018 *
    

Edit: Fixed a bug in my output that showed S11 and W12 as 0 instead of 10.

~~~
aston
Your dates are sorted incorrectly. W2010 happens before S2010, etc.

~~~
tedmiston
Thanks — just added the season sorted output to dsugarman's sibling comment.

------
haaen
YC has funded approximately 1,900 companies. 93 are valued at $100 million or
more. 19 are valued at $1 billion or more. Stripped from nuance, one could say
that if you get accepted into YC, you have a 5 percent chance of building a
$100 million company, and a 1 percent chance of building a $1 billion company.
That's impressive.

Afaik, YC is the only seed funder-startup accelerator in the world, among
thousands of other ones, that has given birth to companies worth $1 billion
ore more.

At least until three years ago, it hasn't passed funding on a single billion
dollar company (1).

Also, rumours are that Coinbase is raising money at a valuation of $8 billion
(2). This is the same valuation that the company supposedly gave itself when
it acquired earn.com in april this year (3).

(1)
[https://twitter.com/rabois/status/634205368172814337](https://twitter.com/rabois/status/634205368172814337)
(2) [https://www.businessinsider.com/coinbase-8-billion-
company-f...](https://www.businessinsider.com/coinbase-8-billion-company-
funding-2018-10/) (3) [https://www.recode.net/2018/4/27/17287184/coinbase-
earn-acqu...](https://www.recode.net/2018/4/27/17287184/coinbase-earn-
acquisition-stock-valuation-eight-billion-earn)

~~~
venantius
> Afaik, YC is the only seed funder-startup accelerator in the world, among
> thousands of other ones, that has given birth to companies worth $1 billion
> ore more.

Seedcamp (London) has backed 3 unicorns: Revolut [$1.7B], UiPath [$3B], and
TransferWise [$1.6B], and that's just a venture firm I know off the top of my
head. While these days they're closer to a first-round fund (with a similar
economic deal to YC) than an accelerator, most of those were from back when
they were operating in a proper accelerator model.

I suspect there are probably a few other accelerators around the world that
have unicorns in their portfolio - you just don't hear about them because
they're not local.

~~~
atestu
Techstars is another one (Sendgrid, Marketo, Pillpack)

~~~
btrautsc
I am fairly sure Marketo was not part of Techstars ?

~~~
atestu
You're right I was mistaken. Not able to edit my comment.

------
Impossible
Meta is at 38 and it recently suspended operations
([https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2018/09/14/ar-
start...](https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2018/09/14/ar-startup-meta-
layoffs-pause-chinese-investor.amp.html))? Is there still hope for an
acquisition? I know this list is a ranking of amount raised but it seems odd
to list dead companies as examples of the "top".

~~~
michaelbuckbee
I imagine that there will be an acquisition of patents/technology but as so
much of the company has already gone on to other things the timing of an
acquihire, etc. seems to be against them.

------
mbesto
A couple of interesting things to note here:

1) Jobs created is not a "net new" job creation. I'm still waiting for someone
to do research on how many jobs get displaced by tech based companies. I think
tech based companies are amazing vehicles for wealth creation, but not so
great for global job creation.

    
    
      1a) I find it interesting that they still have a RFS for "one million jobs" https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/#million given that their highest number of touted jobs is 4k max. For comparison, Amazon has 500k jobs. Maybe 50k or 100k is more of an admirable goal? 
    

2) Interesting to see YC - in some ways admitting I guess - that technology
itself is not a sector, but that technology is enabling certain sectors. I
think this is the right way to look at it. Yet we still often refer to many of
these companies simply as "tech companies".

3) This really should be split between acquired and not acquired companies.
For example, Cruise being valued at $14B after being bought by GM seems
_weird_. Or Dropbox, who is now publicly traded and their value changes every
second. YC will never do this, but I'd love to see realized vs unrealized
gains.

~~~
itronitron
It would be nice to see job creation broken down into 'salary/income
generated'

------
graybolt
Wow, basically all of the valuation is generated by the top 10 companies. 81%
from the top 5, 95% from the top 10. I guess this explains VC strategy
somewhat: if you're not trying to become a unicorn, you're worthless to the
VC.

I wish there was more data supporting the idea of making small, long-term
businesses, but it really seems like the big money is all in going for unicorn
status. Which is a shame, because I think this drives some of the problem
behaviors you see in SV.

~~~
askafriend
You can build successful, small, long-term businesses. There is nothing
stopping you.

Just don't raise venture capital. You can seek capital, just not venture
capital. Venture capital is a very specific style of investing and the model
relies on outsized successes. It is a very small portion of the overall
capital ecosystem that drives our economy. It is not the end-all be-all of
capital allocation.

The mistake laypeople on HN make is thinking that's the only way to capitalize
a business. It's not.

~~~
graybolt
So where else do you find capital, then, for something not focused on extreme
growth? I've got plenty of ideas kicking around, and the experience and skills
to build them, but they're entirely moderate-growth businesses with a ceiling
of single- or double-digit millions a year in revenue. Most of them could be
started for between $10-100k.

A bank is tricky; you put your own savings on the line, and most banks don't
really care about your specific situation, just that you're a risky customer.
I'd prefer not to use family and friends because that has the potential to
destroy relationships. Angels are usually interested in large growth
potential.

Where else do you look for capital?

~~~
paxys
You are looking for a "risk-free obligation-free" option, which doesn't exist.

~~~
graybolt
Hmm. It certainly exists for startups. I've been part of teams for many
startups where the team is shitty, the idea is shitty, and the startup has no
future, but they're able to get funded to the tune of $100k easily before they
crash and burn. There are certainly no obligations attached to most VC money.

Meanwhile, if I want to build something sustainable, even if I'm willing to
give up a decent share of my company, and submit myself to oversight of how
this money is spent and great terms for repayment or equity, I can't get
anywhere. VCs aren't willing to consider a $XX MM market, only a $XXXX MM
market. Even for a good team and a good idea, I've gotten nowhere. I'm totally
willing to give up some double-digit percentage of a company, I'm just not
willing to have to risk $100k if I want to start a company that requires
$100k.

~~~
paxys
Expand quickly or crash and burn trying IS an obligation. Any startup would
love to have years of no rush to try and figure out their business plan, but
the most valuable commodities in the valley are time and patience, not money.

And you're saying you pitch decks to VCs that say the _maximum_ value of the
company can be double digit millions and then wonder why you aren't getting
anywhere?

------
choppaface
It looks like Sam is mostly on track to make his bet:

[https://blog.samaltman.com/bubble-talk](https://blog.samaltman.com/bubble-
talk)

For (3), Gitlab is at approx $1.1B.

~~~
olvo
Seems like a strange exercise, since it doesn't actually touch on the bubble
part. A bubble is when valuations are higher than the actual value, which
usually means the performance after an exit. Presumably we would have to wait
some time after that happens to see whether that is true. If they perform well
we weren't in a bubble and if they don't valuations are likely to fall as
people lose confidence.

------
andygcook
How are the valuations calculated for companies that haven't raised a priced
equity round in a long time? Specifically I'm thinking about companies like
Zapier. They initially raised $1.3M in 2012 but haven't raised since and have
funded off revenue. Is it based on private 409A valuations or some sort of
formula on YC's end?

~~~
snowmaker
They're based on fundraising or acquisition valuations, not 409A valuations.
You're right that some of the companies have not raised money in a while,
which in many cases means that their valuation would be higher if they were
re-valued today.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Is it a safe assumption that any company on the list who was in operation as
of October 2015 with a valuation below $300 million at the time was accepted
into YC Continuity?

~~~
snowmaker
I think there's a misunderstanding of the way YC Continuity works. YC
Continuity isn't a program like YC with an acceptance process.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I appreciate the clarification. Apologies for my misunderstanding.

------
abcdefg123456e
I worked for #15 on that list and let me tell you those guys are some real
jerks. This is their COO yelling at their carriers
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=ooTmdOyKYpQ](https://youtube.com/watch?v=ooTmdOyKYpQ)

~~~
antaviana
The guy yelling mentions at the video that has not slept for 3 days...

~~~
hobofan
And that makes it excusable?

------
ones_and_zeros
The valuation to jobs created ratio really highlights the imbalance between
capital and labor in tech.

~~~
aaachilless
I'm not sure what the spirit of your comment is, but I feel like I should
point out that this is to some extent the "point" of technology: to create
more value with less human capital.

~~~
chabons
Perhaps the raw number of jobs isn't the best denominator then, since many of
the jobs in tech likely pay more to acknowledge this fact. A better measure
would be something like the total of wages payed, or total of wages payed for
the bottom 4 quintiles of workers by salary (cut out C-class executive
outliers). Equity of course makes that harder, but most of the companies on
this list are big enough that they're probably paying more in salary at this
point anyways. I'd be interested to see where that places tech companies vs.
more traditional businesses.

~~~
aaachilless
i think that's an interesting idea. instead of "how many jobs did we create?"
you could ask "how much socioeconomic mobility did we create?". or something
along those lines

------
jack6e
They state that the cumulative valuation of these 100 companies is $100+
billion, of which $81+ billion comes from the top 5 companies, and $95+
billion comes from the top 10.

Also interesting that the top 2 (Airbnb and Stripe) were in the 2009 cohorts.
From the depths of the recession to $50+ billion combined valuation.

~~~
anoncoward111
Yeah these statistics should give any armchair VC/angel wannabees some
thought:

Out of the 2000 or so startups that deserve some type of funding[1], the
chance that you will pick a $1B unicorn is about 0.2%.

Additionally, the chance that you will choose the next Airbnb or Stripe is
closer to 0.002%.

For comparison, you could turn $150,000 into $4,500,000 with about a 3% chance
if you find a vegas table willing to service this bet size (which they have
done in the past).

[1]a16z said this recently

~~~
tlb
I don't see how you get those numbers.

From the article, 19 / 1900 YC startups are above $1B, or 1% (not 0.2%). Many
of the 1900 are young, so the fraction of any cohort that will eventually
reach $1B is more than that.

The chance of having picked exactly AirBnB or Stripe from among YC startups is
2/1900, or 0.11% (not 0.002%). More companies out of that 1900 are likely to
achieve similar valuations in the future.

The payoff ratio for angel investing is much higher than the 30:1 that
Roulette pays. On the order of 1000:1 is typical ($10M cap safe - $20B IPO
with 50% dilution on the way.)

~~~
anoncoward111
No worries, we're using different numbers.

A16Z said that there are 2000 startups worth funding _every year_. Side note,
A16Z only talks to about 1000 of them due to focus areas and competitive
overlap.

Based on the 19 unicorns that YC has unearthed over the past decade, we can
really only say that roughly 2 unicorns are born every year, and 2
megaunicorns born every 5 or so years.

They payoff is immense for finding one, but the chance that you keep at least
all 150k is probably worse than your roulette odds, not to mention time
invested and emotional capital.

~~~
ppezaris
What am I missing? You seem to be taking the YC-specific unicorn numbers and
dividing them by the much broader A16Z "fundable" numbers. Apples & oranges,
no?

~~~
anoncoward111
I assert that they aren't apples and oranges becauss YC has picked every
single unicorn there is to pick up until very recently. Therefore, both the
2,000 number from A16Z and 19 number from YC can be directly compared.

Do you think it is significantly easier to pick unicorns than I am describing?
Because it seems very, very hard.

So hard, in fact, that YC has to pick 150 or so per year and hope that one or
two hit 1000x to make up for the others.

~~~
tlb
I wish YC could have funded every unicorn! In reality there are a few hundred
such companies worldwide, so it's less than 1 in 10.

[https://www.cbinsights.com/research-unicorn-
companies](https://www.cbinsights.com/research-unicorn-companies) has a list.

~~~
anoncoward111
Old tweet but here is where I was basing my "YC funded every unicorn"
assertion (as of 2015)

[https://mobile.twitter.com/rabois/status/634205368172814337](https://mobile.twitter.com/rabois/status/634205368172814337)

~~~
dvdhsu
The tweet you referenced is talking about companies that actually applied to
YC. Uber, for example, never applied to YC.

------
ajoy
I am torn about using valuation to rank companies. Valuation is is a vanity
metric. Its just a number that VCs use to trade their capital, not the true
worth of a company. You could raise $1 million from your rich uncle claiming
to hold 0.1% of company and claim a $1B valuation. But then the question is,
what do you use as the true worth of a company?

~~~
laser
But I don't think any of these were valued by their rich uncles—they were
primarily valued by professional venture capitalists putting money into the
companies at said valuations. Venture capitalists may have flaws in their
valuation methodologies, but who's valuation could you trust more than theirs,
as they put their money where their mouth is?

------
quadcore
Firebase is #91 and they exited at ~$85 millions if I remember correctly. That
gives an idea how mind blowing this list is imho.

~~~
throwaway93847
This is incorrect; acquisition details were never made public.

------
JesseAldridge
It would be interesting to graph the valuations of all of these companies over
time. You could make the x-axis "company age" rather than time in order to
make a more apples-to-apples comparison between older YC companies and younger
YC companies. I did a bit of work along these lines a few weeks ago:

[https://github.com/JesseAldridge/yc_still_good](https://github.com/JesseAldridge/yc_still_good)

Here is the graph I'm talking about:
[https://github.com/JesseAldridge/yc_still_good/blob/master/r...](https://github.com/JesseAldridge/yc_still_good/blob/master/reports/valuation_vs_age.png?raw=true)

~~~
bertm
Great analysis. I wonder how a semi-log graph would look.

------
antaviana
It would be interesting to know the cap delta, not only the cap.

For example, if a company has a valuation of 5B and to reach that point raised
4B, its cap delta is 1B.

Not sure why only the total cap is the one publicized, probably are more
newsworthy bigger vanity numbers than smaller sanity numbers.

------
DrNuke
96 .com, 2 .co, 1 .ai, 1 .tv —— lesson learnt!

------
8_hours_ago
Justin Kan and Kyle Vogt are both on that list twice. That's impressive!

------
sah2ed
Interesting to learn that 9 out of the top 100 are solo founders ...

------
ryanSrich
Really interesting to see the number of jobs created. I imagine that just
means "number of employees". Even so, the fact that Brex is a company with
only 48 employees with over a $1billion dollar valuation is interesting (also
the fact that I've never heard of them, and they only went through YC a year
ago).

------
radiusvector
Analyzed in depth - [https://sridharsmusic.com/analyzing-ycs-
top-100-companies-li...](https://sridharsmusic.com/analyzing-ycs-
top-100-companies-list-by-vintage/)

------
siquick
Does anyone have any stats on Reddit (users, revenue etc) because $1bn seems
like a pretty low valuation for one of the most popular sites on the internet?

------
AznHisoka
Shouldn't DoorDash be #1 if we're talking about jobs created? I'm sure there
are more than 900 DoorDash drivers out there delivering food.

------
asaph
In the list of top investors at the bottom, I'm surprised to see FundersClub
so high (#5 ahead of even Sequoia Capital!) and AngelList not listed.

~~~
immad
SV Angel and FundersClub have deployed an “index fund” strategy on yc batches
for a long time. So makes sense that they are high up on the list.

~~~
asaph
How do the returns on those "index funds" compare with returns on an S&P500
index fund over the same time period?

~~~
immad
I believe that they are much better than S&P500 index.

Returns are very top heavy so as long as you are in some of the top ones they
can be really good. SV Angel did Airbnb and FundersClub did Coinbase.

But past performance is not an indicator of future performance...

------
sroussey
Love to see a list ranked by revenue instead.

------
JamesAdir
Listing private companies by valuation has nothing with reality, just trying
to bump up the next investment rounds. Until a company is public and traded
you can put almost any price on it. With that being said - kodus to all the
companies about the thousand of jobs created.

------
tinkerteller
If all of these companies were incorporated as part of YC batch that would be
very impressive. I've increasing feeling that many companies just want to get
listed as "YC company" to leverage investor network and take advantage of
branding.

------
superplussed
Very cool to see this. Btw, at the bottom you guys linked to a blog post that
didn't resolve: [http://www.ycombinator.com/top-
companies-2018](http://www.ycombinator.com/top-companies-2018)

~~~
katm
Thanks for catching! Fixing now. Here's the real link:
[https://blog.ycombinator.com/category/top-
companies-2018/](https://blog.ycombinator.com/category/top-companies-2018/).

------
Suncho
Are we sure that "jobs created" is something to be proud of? Fewer jobs is
generally better.

I'd rather see how many jobs they've eliminated, but that's probably hard to
calculate.

Or maybe value per employee. The fewer employees, the higher the number.

------
ezekg
TIL Heroku only has 30 employees. That's crazy for the kind of service they
provide.

~~~
wasd
I'm not sure but I believe that's the number of employees they had when they
were acquired. There's ~250 employees listed on LinkedIn.

~~~
ezekg
That makes a lot more sense. Thanks!

------
dqdo
Look carefully at the number of jobs created. Some companies have less than
100 employees with >100 million valuation. I believe that Heroku had just 40.
It’s amazing how small these teams are and what they are able to achieve.

------
secfirstmd
I would like to see some equivalent for YC Top Companies for measure and
recognise their social impact:

-Lowest Carbon emitted -Diversity of workforce -Pay gap between lowest and highest -Open source commitment -etc

------
filleokus
Are they ranked by valuation? Can't seem to find any explanation of how the
rank is calculated. Also surprisingly many of those I've never heard of,
despite spending way too much time at HN :)

~~~
katm
Yes - by valuation.

------
Shounak
I love this list! A quick typo fix: In the listing for Instacart it says
“Valued at over $7s Billion”, which should be changed to just “$7 Billion”.

------
syntaxing
I'm curious how much YC has made these couples years from this list. Does YC
take a specific percentage when you join their incubator?

~~~
andygcook
YC usually takes 7% for $150k in funding. You can read more about the Y
Combinator Deal here
[https://www.ycombinator.com/deal](https://www.ycombinator.com/deal)

~~~
capocannoniere
Interesting to note:

> In addition, we will continue to support the company in the priced equity
> round in which the safe converts, and subsequent financing rounds (priced
> equity rounds or bridge financing rounds) by participating in those rounds
> to approximately maintain our 7% ownership.

This has been the case since 2015 approximately [1]. This means YC's stake in
many of these companies is in the order of 10s or even 100s of millions, since
they keep their 7% through subsequent funding rounds. That's huge.

[1] [https://blog.ycombinator.com/pro-rata/](https://blog.ycombinator.com/pro-
rata/)

------
muzz
Zenefits is still in the Top 10 (at #8)??

------
rajacombinator
This actually shows how bad the odds are and should discourage anyone from
starting or joining a startup...

------
henryl
Pretty sure Stripe is S2010.

~~~
snowmaker
Nope, it was S09.

------
bad_ramen_soup
Is Uber not a YC company?

~~~
zubairshams
No. Here's the full Y Combinator funded companies list:
[https://yclist.com/](https://yclist.com/)

------
Beefin
interesting half are b2b, but thats also a super wide net to cast.

------
mdotk
Why is Atrium on this list? It's an overpriced law firm.

------
gist
> They have created over 28,000 jobs.

I always get a kick out of the 'created jobs' meme. It is always bandied about
in such a positive way. As if you took people out of work and employed them.

The truth is you also need a number that reflect the amount of people that
were put out of work or disadvantaged by a startup. And the people who worked
for startups (to a lesser degree) that would have gotten a job somewhere else.

What is really sad for young people I think is this perception that the road
is paved with gold for anyone in the startup business. Sure they know most
don't succeed in the same way that they know it's hard to play major league
sports or be a music or movie star. But I really don't know if they fully
understand how much of a long shot it really is.

YC celebrating this is fine it's what I would do from a marketing and PR
angle. But the truth is they are in the business of getting as many people
involved in startups that they can because it benefits them greatly.

This is not sour grapes either. I make money off of all of these startups
directly (in a pick axe kind of way). It has been great for sure but it also
takes advantage of the hopes and dreams of a generation who think the only
thing you can do is 'do a startup by going to an accelerator and raising angel
and vc funds'. That is most certainly not the case.

~~~
nraynaud
$3.5M mobilized capital per job, when is it more efficient to just give
handouts to random people? :)

But I think it's extremely misleading to talk about jobs, we are all here to
destroy jobs and concentrate wealth, and some of us are doing worse than
others at Uber, Lyft and co, where the value coming from the destruction goes
to the VCs, and if they crash the value taken goes nowhere.

