
List of Seed Accelerator Programs and their results - robg
http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators
======
aneth4
Most pertinent observation: there isn't much money in startups. The odds truly
are horrendous.

Even from YC, the average exit is only $2M. From other accelerators, the total
of all exists is well below what most founders want for their own exit.

This might explain why companies are so quick to jump on $10M aquihire deals.

Conclusion? If you want financial gain from a startup, go for sustainable
revenue and building a real profitable business. Or get into YC and be one of
their more successful bets.

Granted, there may be a lot more exits in the future from some of these
accelerators, but it's doubtful that will change the averages by any order of
magnitude.

Perhaps we should ask ourselves, why do these investors stick around?

~~~
pg
I'm not sure why you think the average exit is $2 million. Are you getting
that from the column titled "Average $?" If you mouse over that title, you'll
see it refers to the average amount raised.

~~~
bkanber
He may be getting that figure from the $950M "$ Exits" figure divided by 450
companies -- but that's incorrect as not all 450 companies have had exits.

I'd imagine that probably 45 companies have had exits, making the avg exit
value around $20M, which sounds pretty realistic to me.

~~~
aneth4
That's correct, except most of the companies that have not exited never will
(many have already failed,) and it would take quite a few 100M+ exits to
significantly skew that average.

Those assumptions could be wrong, but I don't think more than, say $1B in
exits, can be expected from the existing YC companies, bringing the average YC
exit to $4.5M - not much difference. Even an additional $5B in exits would
only bring the average to $11.1M. Most of that would probably come from a few
startups (think AirBNB), unfairly skewing the average further - we really
should be talking about the much lower median.

Getting into YC brings the average from pitiful to poor. Note there is not a
single 100M+ exit that has occurred from any other accelerator listed.

We also have to factor in founder dilution, which is usually massively higher
in these big exits, and also that exits are split among the founders. The
expected exit for an individual even going through YC is likely sub $1M taking
those factors into account.

My point is not that startups are a bad choice. I am even an occasional angel
investor. This does reinforce the frequently made observation that startups
are not a guaranteed, or even likely, road to riches. Startups are for people
who like startups.

~~~
pg
It's pointless to talk about the median outcome, because it will almost
certainly be zero. It would be very surprising if we had a success rate over
50%. In fact it would probably be bad; it would probably be a sign we were too
conservative.

Your estimate of the total value of YC companies is currently off by about
10x.

Your belief that startups are a mediocre way to make money reflects a
misunderstanding of probability. In fact they are a very good way to make
money for some people, and a terrible way to make money for most people.

~~~
aneth4
I don't think it's pointless to talk about median outcome. The median outcome
or worse, by definition, is what most entrepreneurs will achieve, and as you
say, that's likely zero even for YC companies who based on this data have an
order of magnitude higher success record.

Sorry if my estimate is off - another $10B in exits would change the number
significantly, and maybe the filter and assistance of YC is sufficient to
change the expected outcome. That doesn't so far seem to be the case with
other accelerators.

As you say, "for most people," startups are a terrible way to make money.
Based on this data, "most people" is almost all people that get into almost
all accelerators. I do think that's an important, though perhaps not new,
deduction from this data. It's even more important for people hoping to make
money by joining a startup as a non-founder, where the financial upside is so
much lower.

I'm not sure what you mean about a misunderstanding of probability. Certainly
there is a large amount of both luck and character that determine the outcome
for an individual, and that can be summed up with probability, especially for
any given startup, since as at a poker table, luck is relatively stronger
short term, and character overtakes luck in the long run.

~~~
pg
The misunderstanding of probability is analogous to believing that if 3% of
the population is over 6' 2" tall, the probability that I, when measured, will
be over 6' 2" is 3%. In fact it is 0%.

The overall success rates for founders come from averaging the rates of a few
people for whom the chance of succeeding was quite high with a lot for for
whom it was zero. Which means they have little predictive value for
individuals.

~~~
aneth4
Indeed probability is only useful when there is uncertainty. When there is
certainty, probability is nonsensical.

While I think YC may be quite adept at choosing only people over 6'2", people
in general are not very good at knowing if they are over 6'2" in
entrepreneurial talent. We know people are very bad at judging their own
competence, and generally vastly over-estimate it. There is no tape measure
for entrepreneurial competence. Unfortunately, I'm not sure anyone, even the
YC partner group, is able to reliably measure future success, though I'm sure
you are much better than most investors.

Further, an enormous amount of luck is involved, as demonstrated by the large
number of one-hit-wonder entrepreneurs, the vast range in outcome for
similarly talented people, as well as the large number of impressive
entrepreneurs who never really succeed.

So I do think it makes sense to apply probability to your chance of success,
no matter who you are. Very talented entrepreneurs still have a high chance of
failure, and there is also a good chance that someone is not as talented as
they and others think they are. We all know people of both types.

------
jedc
Seed-DB founder here.

I've recently added a feature where I grant permission for users to enter/edit
information on their accelerator and their accelerator startups to Seed-DB.
It's a manual process, and I only give this permission to accelerator program
founders or administrators. But if that's you, please get in touch.
(jed.christiansen@seed-db.com)

Otherwise, if you sign up for the newsletter (<http://www.seed-
db.com/about/view?page=newsletter> <\- very low traffic) you'll hear about all
the new stuff first.

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acgourley
I just wanted to point out many of those programs are < 4 years old and four
years after YC's founding nearly everyone was skeptical of them. It just takes
a while to a) get a few winners b) get a market value on them.

If the powerlaw of startup outcomes is accurate, nearly all of these programs
are too young and too small to have telling data.

------
rdl
The median $ seems incorrect -- for Y Combinator, it seems to be the
investment just from YC, and for other programs, it seems to be their entire
raise from all sources.

I believe most YC companies raise external capital on top of YC; there has
been START and YC VC from $80k to $150k, and according to pg, a most YC
companies that need to raise capital have been successful doing so (at least
for the past few years).

~~~
pg
Yes, it's way off. It's based on Crunchbase, which is very incomplete about
funding unless investors make a deliberate effort to log rounds there. The
actual median up to w2012 seems to be 850k. (We don't have fundraising data
from the summer batch in our system yet.)

~~~
jedc
(Seed-DB founder here)

Exactly; where the majority of startups in an accelerator don't have funding
data in Crunchbase, it defaults to the funding that startups get from the
accelerator itself. (This is why the list of accelerators defaults to sorting
by average funding versus median funding.)

There were a few different ways I could have calculated median funding. The
first is just looking at the values of startups with funding data, but this
would have only identified the median funding of the "winners" of a program
and thus isn't as valuable. So I calculate median by using funding data from
Crunchbase for each startup, and where there's none I use the original funding
from the accelerators.

If anyone has any questions, comments or feedback, my e-mail is plastered all
over the site. (jed.christiansen@seed-db.com)

~~~
rdl
Personally, I would just list the funding provided automatically to each
company (complicated in the case of YC since it varies with team size). I'd
almost exclude the START and YC VC notes from YC, as they're not mandatory.

A more useful stat is "able to raise follow on funding" or "still in business
after a year", I think.

~~~
jedc
I'm not sure what you're looking for here.

I import each company's funding data from Crunchbase, whether that's a
convertible note or an equity round. My comment above was just regarding the
algorithm for calculating median funding.

I've been thinking about ways to figure out if a company is still in business,
and will be implementing them over the next few months. (This is still a
nights/weekends project for me.) One of the easiest ways is just to display a
company's twitter/blog feeds on their Seed-DB entry. If they haven't been
updated in a long time, that implies they're no longer in business.

------
fidanov
Funny table, but does not showing anything about the success of those
businesses or the VCes. As far as this table shows, each of these companies
may have been a total failure, which I am sure is not true.

There should be columns like "profits", "revenue", "median profits", "number
of profitable companies". Such type of columns will show how successful are
both the companies and the accelerators.

Also the "average lifespan" and "number of companies still operating" could be
other interesting metrics that provide an insight on how sustainable are those
companies.

~~~
jedc
Founder of Seed-DB here. I'd love to get numbers on revenue, profits, etc. but
it's essentially impossible to do this for private companies. Even average
lifespan is difficult because death is often not a single day, but a slow
transition.

~~~
fidanov
You are right. Its hard + I suppose some VC companies will try to prevent
revealing such data, as it will not show them in the best possible light.

------
subrat_rout
I can't find Founder Institute.

~~~
jedc
I have a pretty strict definition of what constitutes a "seed accelerator":
<http://www.seed-db.com/about/view?page=definition>

Since Founder Institute charges startups to be a part of the program, it's not
included.

------
seats
last time around

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4291075>

~~~
rdl
Is it still accurate for TechStars Cloud? (I'm intrigued by the concept of
thematic incubators. Particularly, what happens if you pick a theme that
either eats the world (cloud) or dies (TechStars Flash would not be something
I'd invest in right now...)

~~~
kevinpfab
Yes, the numbers for TechStars Cloud are accurate. If you're interested in
learning more about the themed program, feel free to contact me and I'll
answer any questions you have!

Source: I was a founder in TSC's first class.

