I’m not convinced that the dominant YC companies looked obviously dominant at their early stages; they only seem dominant in retrospect.
As for why the giant companies at YC are still the dominant winners, it’s because the winners just keep growing. We don’t have a sense of scale; when Airbnb was a $500m company it was YC’s poster child. Now Airbnb is worth many billion dollars, and of course it still is the poster child, while companies like LendUp are valued at $500m but are not even talked about.
It’s not that because YC and startups are less successful, it’s that some are so incredibly successful you stop paying attention to the successful ones.
If the measure is valuations coming out of YC, Airbnb raised at a $3m valuation. A lot of YC companies raised $3m at a $14m+ valuation, but that’s more an indication of the market than of the likelihood of success of those companies.
I’m not convinced that the dominant YC companies looked obviously dominant at their early stages; they only seem dominant in retrospect.
As for why the giant companies at YC are still the dominant winners, it’s because the winners just keep growing. We don’t have a sense of scale; when Airbnb was a $500m company it was YC’s poster child. Now Airbnb is worth many billion dollars, and of course it still is the poster child, while companies like LendUp are valued at $500m but are not even talked about.
It’s not that because YC and startups are less successful, it’s that some are so incredibly successful you stop paying attention to the successful ones.
If the measure is valuations coming out of YC, Airbnb raised at a $3m valuation. A lot of YC companies raised $3m at a $14m+ valuation, but that’s more an indication of the market than of the likelihood of success of those companies.