Of 80 startups we've funded, about 5 had one founder at the time we funded them. Maybe a third of applications are from single founders. So from the data so far it looks like it's 5x harder to get accepted as a single founder.
That probably overestimates the difficulty, though. A significant fraction of the applications are from people with perpetual motion machines, etc. Those are invariably single founders. If you discount those, maybe it's only 2 or 3x harder as a single founder.
I would encourage you to try and find a cofounder though-- not just because it makes you more likely to be funded by YC, but because it makes your startup more likely to succeed.
These are very interesting statistics -- is there any chance that you could provide some more? In particular, I'd be interested in knowing the age distribution of all applicants vs. successful applicants and the distribution of education (high school/some college/undergraduate degree/some graduate/graduate degree) of all applicants vs. successful applicants.
I seem to recall that you've said before that the "average" accepted YC applicant is 25 years old and has an undergraduate degree; but more information is always useful.
We don't have much more statistics than that. Most of the things we try to measure are not easily represented that way. What we look for is people who seem energetic, smart, and practical, regardless of things like where they went to school or how old they are.
i think pg said he did not want to get into statistics war with other companies and if there was a correlation i would trust pg to find it and use it because its in his interest.
I'm not entirely sure why such stats are all that useful. Trying to be closer to the average doesn't seem very sensible to me. (neither does trying to be as far away from the average as possible as a means onto itself)
Such statistics are useful because they give people insight as to how likely they are to be accepted, and thus whether it's worth applying. Just as the OP was wondering about his chances of being accepted as a sole founder, I can easily imagine someone thinking "gee, I'm 30 years old... there's probably no point applying... but I have a PhD and pg's statistics show that applicants with PhDs are far more likely to be accepted, so maybe I should apply after all".
If you have a good idea that you are committed to, why should the statistics matter? If someone says "gee, I'm 30, i shouldn't apply," that seems pretty weak of them.
Although, I think the statistics would be very interesting to read over.
If you have a good idea that you are committed to, why should the statistics matter?
Because most good ideas which people are committed to aren't "get accepted into YC". Why shouldn't someone say "I'm not likely to get accepted into YC, so I'll spend my time working on my good idea instead of filling out the YC application form"?
We try to make the questions on the YC application form sufficiently useful that it would be worthwhile spending the time to fill it out even if you never submitted it.
As it is, you're not likely to get accepted, regardless of age and education statistics, due to the sheer volume of applications versus spots available.
Correlation does not imply causation. Repeat with me: correlation does not imply causation
Correlation does not imply causation -- but correlation can still be useful for making predictions or decisions. The fact that the word "V!@gra" appears in an email doesn't cause the email to be spam, but it does provide a strong indication that it's probably not worth reading said email.
If (taking a wildly hypothetical example) it turned out that 50% of YC applicants were over age 30 but 0% of the accepted YC applicants were over age 30, it would a strong indication to potential applicants over age 30 that they needn't bother applying -- and this is true whether the YC management has a deliberate bias against over-30s or not.
From reading the application, that still looks likely. "Only founder" is in a list of apparent deal-breakers. Perhaps the 5 pg mentioned had co-founders in-waiting, some special connection, history of success, or finished app.
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Are any of the following true?
(a) You are the only founder. (b) You are a student who may return to school in the fall. (c) Half or more of your group can't move to Boston for the summer. (d) One or more founders will keep their current jobs during the summer. (e) None of the founders are programmers.
The number funded from each category has to be related to the numbers submitted from each category to make any meaningful comment on relative "hardness to get funding".
That probably overestimates the difficulty, though. A significant fraction of the applications are from people with perpetual motion machines, etc. Those are invariably single founders. If you discount those, maybe it's only 2 or 3x harder as a single founder.
I would encourage you to try and find a cofounder though-- not just because it makes you more likely to be funded by YC, but because it makes your startup more likely to succeed.