

Ask HN: Have any Mexicans ever been accepted into Y Combinator? - jorgecastillo

I was talking with this schoolmate, somehow we started talking about Mexico City. I remembered about his trip one and a half years ago, so I asked about CETIN (Centro de Tecnología e Innovación Telmex). He told me about how awesome it was, that there we&#x27;re all this programmers doing their own thing. So I asked him if he had ever heard of Y Combinator, I told him what first came to my mind. &quot;It&#x27;s an accelerator&quot;, &quot;The best accelerator in the world&quot;, &quot;Dropbox, Airbnb&quot;, &quot;$6,000 USD years ago&quot;, &quot;$100,000 USD now&quot;, &quot;USA three months&quot;, &quot;$500,000 USD Azure&quot;, &quot;$100,000 USD Google Cloud&quot;, &quot;10% Equity&quot;, &quot;Very selective&quot;, &quot;Demo day&quot;, etc. Well you get my point. On the way home while I was reflecting about our chat, I got really curious about my question, so I thought I&#x27;d ask!
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gamechangr
I believe in my friends year there was a man from Argentina ( = Latino !=
Mexican)

I personally lived in Monterrey, Mexico for two years. While most of my best
friends are Mexican, I would hope that Y combinator would focus on the best
ideas and the best teams and NOT where they are born or they would be in
danger of loosing their "best status"as other programs would simple get the
best possible people.

I think of Basketball where some countries, lets hypothetically pick
Switzerland, pick the tallest/best 5 players that are Swiss. Other countries
like the US, by comparison, pick the tallest/best 5 players from anywhere they
can find them. The USA doesn't have the CONSTRAINT of having to pick just
Americans.

I say pick the best from anywhere.

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WhitneyLand
Is your question about ethnic diversity or the practicality of applying from
another country? I think your question sounds a bit loaded and could stand
some clarification.

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needacig
I think you're reading too much into the question. It's not really ambiguous
-- he is asking if any citizens of Mexico been accepted to Y-combinator. It's
a yes or no question that could be answered more fully with a single number.
If you wanted to answer it more broadly you could consider immigrants from
Mexico too.

~~~
jorgecastillo
>I think you're reading too much into the question. It's not really ambiguous
-- he is asking if any citizens of Mexico been accepted to Y-combinator.

Yep, just this!

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jdcarluccio
There is not an answer for the country of origin but of the demographic (race
and gender). I wrote about it here: [https://medium.com/@JDcarlu/what-is-
wrong-with-sv-networks-a...](https://medium.com/@JDcarlu/what-is-wrong-with-
sv-networks-a2f203431ea6) PS:I'm latino

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yawaramin
While we're on the subject: what's the geographical distribution of YC-
accepted founders?

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runamok
I read an article recently that in the past they did not measure founder
metrics like this besides gender but were considering doing so going forward.

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shopinterest
Dunno for YCombinator, but 500startups (USA-Mountain View) has had already 4-6
startups founded by Mexicans (and a Mexican-cum-american, wait, that's me) You
don't need to come to Silicon Valley for an accelerator, 500startups Mexico
City is right there!

