
Y Combinator Top Companies List 2019 - andygcook
https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/
======
screye
I am surprised that reddit is on #13.

It's alexa rank in US social media websites is #2 behind Facebook. Apart form
their redesign shenanigans, people actually like the product they offer (in
contrast to facebook) and they are still growing.

I wish Reddit stays in the kind of "grey" area where it never gets as
"official" as twitter, despite the popularity. If anything, that might be
entirely its appeal.

That predicament will eternally present a glass ceiling for reddit's revenue,
but as a consumer I'd rather see that than it going the full facebook -> hyper
growth above anything else approach.

~~~
krn
> I am surprised that reddit is on #13.

Reddit might be a #1 _project_ out of all the startups ever funded by Y
Combinator, but it's unlikely to ever become a top 10 _company_.

Because as an ad business it can neither match Google at targeting audience by
exact user intent, nor Facebook at targeting audience by exact user profile.

In fact, I see reddit more like Couchsurfing: a project which would do _much_
better as a foundation rather than a corporation, based on the role it plays
in the society.

At its essence, it's a highly scalable CRUD application, which requires a
simple user interface, respectful community moderation, and as little user
tracking as possible.

~~~
segmondy
> "It's just a CRUD application"

If I had a quarter every time I heard this. You can say that for half of the
companies on that list. If Facebook and Google can make so much money from
ads, heck even Twitter. Reddit can do the same if they really put in the
effort in building a strong ad platform. They are quite comfortable.

~~~
AlchemistCamp
Twitter, so much so that it has been a typical "example app" for MVC-framework
intro books and tutorials for the last decade and a half!

~~~
KajMagnus
Calling Reddit a CRUD makes me think of saying an airplane is "aluminium and a
bit nails with glue"?

One can fold paper planes too (example airplane app)

------
AlchemistCamp
Interestingly six of the top ten built on Ruby!

Python is also strongly represented, but zero started with back-ends on Java,
.Net. PHP, or other more broadly popular options.

This is strong evidence that the startup world is dramatically different from
that of enterprises and businesses where tech is ancillary (which dominate
total numbers in popularly shared statistics). In many ways it's a vindication
of PG's old essays. Though we're not all using Lisp, startups lean towards it.

~~~
dmode
Having worked at a few of the top ones, many of them are now investing huge
$$$ to rearchitect their tech platform to Java and services. I understand that
Ruby allowed them to grow fast, but I am wondering if starting with Java to
begin with would have allowed them to avoid massive investment to address tech
debt at the expense of growth and profitability at a late stage.

~~~
ramraj07
Can you elaborate further? Why is Java better than any of the other languages
commonly discussed in hn?

~~~
novok
Types, among the most performant garbage collected languages out there, very
mature dev tooling that can speed you up in many ways, large library set,
history of being more open than C#. Also many data libraries are made with it
and interface well with it, such as kafka, hadoop, etc.

And there are many good engineers who are well versed with the language.

~~~
ramraj07
Why not Scala then? Only issue might be getting Scala engineers, but then I'm
assuming good java devs can quickly catch on Scala..

~~~
novok
Scala has bad build times and a compiler that people have a hard time
understanding AFAIK, so it's future development is more suspect. And it has as
reputation of large companies moving away from using it:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scala_(programming_language)#C...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scala_\(programming_language\)#Criticism)

While something like kotlin has a small learning curve and gives you a lot of
the benefits of scala. And it's backed by google, jetbrains & the investment
that goes into android. Most people understand ADTs, nullable types, lambdas
and data classes fairly readily.

I think it basically comes down to a company making a system out of a
dynamically typed garbage collected language of either php, javascript, python
or ruby, and suffering the perf issues (~8x slower than C/C++) and lack of
type safety that it gives. Also those languages typically have ecosystem
issues as far as the robustness of their libraries go (like javascript).

A more mature company settles into a typed GC language (Java, C#, Golang) and
a typed static language for perf benefits when needed (C++, Rust). Yes there
are typed versions of various dynamic languages now, but you don't get the
speed benefits that the typing gives you, and a large part of the library
ecosystem that you will interact with will still be untyped under the hood.

------
vanilla-almond
Here is a breakdown of the locations based on the HQ

    
    
      US:          85
    
      Remote:      4
    
      Europe:      3
    
      S. America:  3
    
      S. Asia:     3
    
      Canada:      2
    
      Africa:      1  
     
      SE Asia:     1
    
      Middle East: 1
    

Two companies have HQ in two countries hence why the totals above equal 103
and not 101

~~~
ignoramous
Aren't all three companies from South Asia Indian: Razorpay, Meesho, and
ClearTax?

------
daveed
If you look at the diffs between this and the last list, there are def some
companies that opted out of listing. Some of them had so much funding that
there's no way that they could've just fallen out. For example, Machine Zone,
Zenefits, LendUp, Soylent.

Also interesting, are supposedly well-capitalized companies from the 2018 list
that shut down: uBiome(with a fair amount of attention) and Meta.

Other fun observations might just be how much money people are raising. Memsql
was 40 in 2018, and is 67 in 2019. I'm guessing they didn't raise money in the
time between, and a bunch of companies did so in the meanwhile.

Also kind of interesting? CoreOS(2018 #42) was above Heroku (2018 #46), but in
this year's list is above them (Heroku #71, CoreOS #73). But both were
acquired by the time that the 2018 list was made. I'm not sure what this is
about, but maybe it's because the acquisition terms weren't all cash, and
there were fluctuations in the intervening time in Salesforce vs RHT(and then,
RHT got acquired by IBM so who knows how that factors into the present value
of what used to be CoreOS). Fun.

~~~
DeonPenny
Lendup fell of cause it fired most of it's staff after running out of funding.
They renamed themselves too.

------
ignoramous
Psyched to see Meesho up there. Ecomm over WhatsApp is huge in India and
they've acquired a significant customer base judging from the # of app
installs (~10M+). My prediction is, it won't be long before they grow too huge
to be acquired or get acquired themselves.

I count three startups from India in YC S19 batch that rely on WhatsApp as an
auxillary platform:

1\. [https://vahan.co](https://vahan.co) does recruitment over WhatsApp for
low to medium income jobs.

2\. [https://digi-prex.com](https://digi-prex.com) is a subscription service
for medicines.

3\. [https://mahamela.in](https://mahamela.in) a group buying e-commerce
business.

Another interesting point, I think, is both startups from Zenefits co-founders
are in top 100: Rippling and ZeroDown; the latter with just 15 employees.

Of the startups on the list, I personally like what Flexport and
RigettiComputing are doing.

Here is a similar list of _top companies_ I stumbled upon a year or so back
(not just limited to YC): [https://breakoutlist.com](https://breakoutlist.com)

------
choppaface
Looks like Sam is close to closing at least #1 and #2 on his bets
[https://blog.samaltman.com/bubble-talk](https://blog.samaltman.com/bubble-
talk)

With Gitlab perhaps closing #3

~~~
breck
Pretty solid predictions.

1) The below 6 companies will be worth >$200B by 1/1/2020.

public: \- uber 50 \- pinterest 14 \- dropbox 8

private: \- airbnb 35 \- spacex 33 \- palantir 26

$166B so very close so far.

2) Stripe, Zenefits, Instacart, Mixpanel, Teespring, Optimizely, Coinbase,
Docker, and Weebly will be worth > $27B total by 1/1/2019.

Stripe alone was valued at $35B, so this one looks like a lock.

3) Winter 2015 batch will be worth >$3B on 1/1/2020.

GitLab $2.7

So looks pretty close.

Impressive.

~~~
edouard-harris
The top 100 list includes 6 other companies from W15 (Equipment Share,
RazorPay, Ironclad, GrubMarket, Notable, and Atomwise). So prediction 3) has
definitely come true.

------
cfontes
I am completely out of the loop so might be my ignorance, but why is Brex
worth so much?

The founders are super smart and accomplished, I even know some people that
worked at pagar.me which was big success in Brazil and can say the guys are
super hard working and smart.

But I fail to understand why Brex is such a wonderful idea, I worked for years
on the payments sector and all features listed are fairly common to all major
providers.

~~~
tempsy
Because it’s hard for a lot of startups to qualify for traditional corporate
charge cards with no personal guarantee even though the venture backed ones
have a lot of money in the bank.

Personally I think the fact Stripe launched a competitor will make it hard for
them to grow as fast as they might have prior.

~~~
ian0
Not sure if this is the case in the US, but here in SEA we had an unbelievably
hard time getting corporate credit cards.

In my previous company we were actually building credit card authentication
systems for banks and schemes, a private company with years of operation. And
still - we werent approved for a card! Never-mind being provided a solution
for managing them correctly.

In the end, like everyone else, we had to take out personal cards. The problem
was, the company was so prompt repaying our personal cards we could never get
approved for credit limit increases. Apparently you have to rack up some
accruing debt...

PS Obviously not related to valuation (perhaps?) but Brex has the most
refreshingly clear description on the list "Brex does corporate credit cards."

~~~
cfontes
nice to know. Thanks for the reply

------
andygcook
Question for YC: How does the list rank companies like Zapier that are growing
very fast, but haven't raised in years to set a current valuation? I'd imagine
that revenue is factored into play but perhaps not shown.

~~~
austenallred
The list only uses their last valuation, so YC just acknowledges it's not a
perfect metric and publishes the list by last valuation.

~~~
andygcook
That makes sense and thanks for the reply, Austen. Also, congrats on making
the Top #100 for Lambda School.

------
yowlingcat
Where is valuation? Why isn't it listed? Also, what's up with the weird name
"jobs created" for employees? I feel like these details must have been chosen
deliberately, but I can't determine why.

~~~
quaquaqua1
The minimum valuation is 150M, and as for the number of employees hired, I
would venture to say that they are trying to use it for PR purpose. Employees
are a big cost center for a business (a few thousand can cost 100M a year or
more) so it sounds like they really want to highlight all the favors they are
doing for the world by employing so many people.

~~~
killjoywashere
> really want to highlight all the favors they are doing for the world by
> employing so many people

Um, well, yes, in a democracy, jobs created is _the_ most interesting metric
for politicians, particularly if those jobs are in their district. Those are
their constituents. Do you want policies that are friendly toward tech
companies and tech workers alike? Because connecting the jobs with the
companies is how you do that.

~~~
yowlingcat
I still think there are subtle issues with the semantics. Does "jobs created"
necessarily imply "careers started" or is the case something else? Where are
the boundaries? How much of its personnel contributions are part-time workers
or independent contractors?

Nonetheless, I think you have a great point here. There's a subtle positioning
difference between "employees" and "jobs created" \-- the latter most directly
connects a company's economic impact/participation with its contribution to
the domestic labor market.

------
alteria
2018 list is available here [1], it's interesting to see what the big jumps
are.

[1][https://web.archive.org/web/20190904014058/https://www.ycomb...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190904014058/https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/v)

~~~
derwiki
Can I snipe someone into diffing the two and listing “biggest jumps”?

~~~
johncoogan
Just shared a google sheet with you.

~~~
alteria
Do you mind sharing it with me as well?

------
shubidubi
interesting fact - out of the top 100 companies, (only?) 4 are remote.

~~~
dmode
The dominance of San Francisco is mind blowing and flies in the face of the
narrative of "decentralizing tech" that I have been hearing over the last
decade

~~~
knd775
YC is based in the bay area, so that's not too surprising.

------
lacker
Hmm, how is Cruise #3? It seems like their acquisition was for around a
billion dollars, but DoorDash and Coinbase should be above that on the list.

~~~
asdf21
I've never even heard of them... I tried googling and just got cruise.com lol

~~~
therealdrag0
[https://getcruise.com/](https://getcruise.com/)

------
rblion
TIL reddit is a YC company. I had no idea this whole time.

~~~
yters
In fact, isn't HN pg's version of reddit?

~~~
jedberg
It certainly started that way! At this point it's pretty different though. I
enjoy both for different reasons.

------
bryanmgreen
I know that social and environmental good organizations historically trend
towards the “not as profitable or even profitable” category which makes them
less likely to be funded and consequently on this list, but I wish more of the
companies on this were driving more important change in the world.

~~~
techslave
so you wish the list were something it’s not.

~~~
bryanmgreen
What’s your reason for such an antagonist reply?

I wish that those types of companies could find ways to generate more revenue
and job opportunities and get on lists like this. In the same vein, I think YC
has the opportunity and resources to really elevate those types of companies
and help them make it big.

------
gopi
Surprised Stripe ranked ahead of Airbnb. But thinking about it makes sense,
Stripe eventually will skim a percentage out of every transaction on the
internet... Also only one ad-supported consumer internet company, all are
either Saas or marketplaces

------
koolba
I'd love to see a list like this sorted by gross revenue (i.e. net GDP
contribution) or total paid compensation. Contrasting either of those vs.
invested capital would be particularly interesting.

------
tempsy
There's a certain irony in a investor (YC) perpetuating the myth of private
valuations. Haven't we learned from WeWork and Juul etc that private
valuations are mostly meaningless?

~~~
derwiki
WeWork I’ve heard a lot about. Why is Juul’s valuation meaningless? Thanks in
advance!

~~~
wiggles_md
The current vaping-related lung disease crisis, plus alleged sloppy marketing
practices at Juul, plus expectations of increased FDA regulatory oversight.
They’re still worth something, but Altria’s investment is unlikely to yield a
great ROI.

------
haolez
English is not my native language, but this sentence looks really weird to me:

“Helion Energy is breaking the fusion barrier and will be the first to clean,
safe, and low-cost commercial electricity.”

~~~
tgarv
The weird part of this sentence is that "...will be the first to..." has an
implied "arrive at" or "develop" after it -- so it could be read as "Helion
Energy is breaking the fusion barrier and will be the first to develop* clean,
safe, and low-cost commercial electricity."

------
rwmurrayVT
The descriptions of some of these are hilariously SV.

------
negrit
Surprising to not see Zenefits in the list

~~~
e40
Perhaps this is why: [https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/02/zenefits-fires-
nearl...](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/02/zenefits-fires-nearly-half-
its-staff)

------
nickstinemates
Jobs created seems off or I misunderstand it. Docker has more than 400
employees for the past few years.

~~~
forgotmysn
i think these numbers are based on whenever the last valuation was

------
pascalxus
Is there a slow down trend in the number of successful companies funded more
recently, say in the last 4 years?

I know it takes time for startups to become successful. it just seems that the
pre 2015 era had more successful startups. That would mirror the broader trend
we see in the marketplace of fewer and fewer successful startups.

------
pazimzadeh
Maybe I missed something obvious but what are the ranks based on?

~~~
37
Very first sentence? (still ambiguous)

>Here is a list of the top Y Combinator companies by valuation as of October
2019.

~~~
pazimzadeh
Whoops thanks

------
rsp1984
The URL for Embark is actually embarktrucks.com, not embark.com

~~~
katm
thanks for catching

------
yters
Gone are the days where innovation means a new invention.

~~~
chubot
When was that ever true? Businesses have always improved something that
exists. They don't really exist to create "new inventions".

Sometimes they start that way, but those are the exception, not the rule. For
example, Xerox (xerography) and Google.

Apple did a lot of inventing, but they also clearly stood on the shoulders of
Xerox PARC, which did a lot more inventing.

Every other company I can think of is not based on "inventions", but more
"bringing to market". Netscape was a great tech company, but they didn't
invent the web, etc.

~~~
yters
Sure, lots of the big tech companies used tech invented elsewhere, but still,
they were bringing new technologies to market that hadn't been seen before.
Internet access through browsers was big and new. Google was a huge step over
the competition. Apple iPods and iPhones big and new. Lower down: databases,
network hardware, and so on.

Now it seems like a bunch of micro-optimizations, ways to avoid legislation,
or lifestyle products. Not new forms of technology entering the market that
really do change everything. The 'change everything' technologies, like Musks'
ventures, seem to be a bunch of moonshots (or marshots).

~~~
davidivadavid
Like you, I assume, I'd love to see more remarkable innovation, but the
reality of innovation is that it's mostly a slow grind where most of the value
is in optimizing the current paradigm until it breaks and we have to figure
out a new 10x paradigm.

There are also dynamic effects where incremental innovation makes future
radical/disruptive innovation easier.

Since most technologies are combinations of previous technologies, it's rare
to find completely new technologies/inventions, and that's ok.

The fact that to reach their potential, innovation must be diffused through
society also bounds the pace at which it can go. As that infrastructure
develops, standards emerge that allow for innovation to be distributed faster.
But then, in turn, as the underlying technologies improve incrementally, they
also ossify as an infrastructure, which might delay bigger innovations.

The question of where the disruption/incrementalism equilibrium lies and what
its ideal position can be is very interesting and, I find, understudied.

~~~
yters
I think the previous round of breakthroughs produced a collective brain drain
that is making the next round more difficult to come by.

------
Beefin
Breakdown by industry:

B2B Software and Services 53

Financial Technology and Services 16

Consumer Goods and Services 11

Education 4

Automotive 3

Biotech 3

Consumer Media 3

Aerospace 2

Construction 2

Healthcare 2

Real Estate 2

Energy and Environment 1

------
bugsense
Go Nurx!

------
arthurcolle
Is Brex some kind of tongue-in-cheek reference to Brexit?

~~~
mikekij
No. Unfortunate coincidence.

~~~
ToFundorNot
doubly so:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bre-X](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bre-X)

