Y Combinator Accepts Record 60+ New Startups For Summer 2011

http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/10/y-combinator-accepts-record-60-new-startups-for-summer-2011/

by acrum • 15 years ago

151 92 15 years ago

So 60+ out of how many?

I must admit. I cant wait to hear the types of startups that made the cut this time. It would be incredible to know (or scary as hell) to find out if any of them are in essence, similar to what we want to do (or are in the process of doing).

YC has made it possible for some really cool technologies come to the marketplace. And YC has inspired many like me to get off our collective asses to chase our dreams. Even if what I am currently building does not amount to a whole lot, the essays of PG has sure inspired me and will in turn inspire a lot many more who I will be sure to recommend it to.

abbasmehdi7• 15 years ago

Yes, I feel naked for telling them every useful insight we had about our project.

emmett• 15 years ago

I can promise you they barely remember the interview. After so many days with hours of 10 minute interviews, the chances they will even remember any useful insight you had is close to nil.

Moreover, YC would never take an idea you told them in an interview and tell it to another start-up.

gscott• 15 years ago

Don't worry about good ideas and telling others. Desire is above implementation. If someone else doesn't desire the idea as much as you do it will never be implemented and even if implemented, not the same way you would.

xnerdr• 15 years ago

Do you have a link to "the essays of PG"? I'd be interested in checking them out...

alexgartrell• 15 years ago

http://paulgraham.com/articles.html

I'm actually pretty surprised that there are HN users that don't know about his essays...

teej• 15 years ago

I'll let PG answer that:

    On-time applications for s2011 were up by 84% from w2011

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2512854

andrewcooke2• 15 years ago

is this going to suffer from the same problems as increased class sizes? less personal mentoring, for example?

i guess you can argue that it increases the pool of connections, but that's a lower quality (unproved) pool than contacts with established players, no?

nanoanderson• 15 years ago

I think YC would cut it off if they knew they had reached their limit. After all, they're investing in these companies and want them all to succeed. Overbooking would cost them a lot of money in the short- and long-term.

andrewcooke2• 15 years ago

that depends on the maths, doesn't it? for example, although they no doubt want them all to succeed, they probably make a lot of money on very few, and those few pay for the rest. since no-one can predict exactly which those few are, it's not clear the investors lose by increasing the pool (as long as they don't lower their standards).

that's not the same arguments as a participant might use. it could be that you're going to start several companies in your lifetime; the probability of any one succeeding is not that great, but hopefully one will. from that point of view, what you want from YC is high quality contacts that carry across into future companies, even if those are not YC supported.

there's nothing to say, on the face of it, that those to mechanisms must pull in the same direction; the timescales are different, for example.

ksolanki3• 15 years ago

is this going to suffer from the same problems as increased class sizes? less personal mentoring, for example?

Probably NOT. The bar has been higher in recent batches and as a result, relatively more established companies make it to the batch, as compared to, say, in 2005 - 2007. This benefits both the companies and YC -- the companies benefit by the excellent environment and networking opportunities, and YC ends up making somewhat (again, relatively speaking) safer investments.

nicholasjbs• 15 years ago

YC is certainly getting and accepting applications from more established companies now, but they're also still funding very, very early stage companies (i.e., two founders and an idea).

My cofounder and I were in the Summer 2010 batch and fit that description, and I know of founders in this summer's batch who do as well.

tokenadult• 15 years ago

is this going to suffer from the same problems as increased class sizes?

(Note: I first came to Hacker News by following links after reading Paul Graham's essays on education, e.g.,

http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

from 2003,

http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html

http://www.paulgraham.com/college.html

from 2005,

http://www.paulgraham.com/colleges.html

from 2007, and

http://www.paulgraham.com/credentials.html

from 2008, so my starting assumption is that some other people here on HN like to discuss education policy.)

What evidence is there that there are problems from increased class sizes? Several of the countries that best the United States in educational achievement

http://pirls.bc.edu/timss2007/PDF/T07_M_IR_Chapter1.pdf

have long had larger class sizes than the United States. For example, my wife grew up in Taiwan when the typical class size was 60 pupils in each classroom, and an unusually small class might have 50 pupils. But she had better primary and secondary education in mathematics and science and world history than I had (I supplemented my schooling with much independent reading of library books, which is the main reason I can keep up with her knowledge base) and she was going to school in a second language (her native language and home language was Taiwanese, but all her school instruction was in Mandarin) and attained strong proficiency in English by the end of high school besides. Small class sizes aren't so good if they match up many learners with less proficient teachers and curricula that are not well thought out. Better to have a larger class size, if that means being with a better teacher, and that's what the research shows about education policy. On the specific point of mentoring for start-up businesses, if the YC people know their craft, and it appears that they do, shared face time with them is better than much more undivided face time with at least some other investors. Choose your trade-offs if you are launching a start-up.

staunch• 15 years ago

This makes YC a lot less interesting to me. Being one of ~150 founders vying for attention/advice/mindshare of YC is just not very compelling.

bumbledraven• 15 years ago

But they don't have to compete - each startup can all have all the face time they want.

"There's no limit to the number of office hours they can book; startups talk to us as often as they want... The office hour software is designed not just to book slots, but to show us if startups are getting enough time with us. We set aside blocks of time for office hours, and if not all the slots get taken, we know demand is satisfied. (If all the slots get taken, we set aside more time.)" http://ycombinator.com/atyc.html

pg15• 15 years ago

Actually we've improved the system since then. Now startups that want to talk can also request office hours, and people who are in the queue get slots first whenever we create a new block. I should add something about that.

pg15• 15 years ago

As of last batch, which had 45 startups in it, we were able to give everyone the attention they needed, as measured by the results (= most observers thought w2011 was the best batch so far).

edanm• 15 years ago

Do you feel close to the limit you can handle? You've said several times you're not there yet, but maybe you have a feeling about it.

fleaflicker• 15 years ago

How can you judge a class so quickly? I think it's impossible to evaluate a class until 3+ years after YC.

h34t• 15 years ago

This would also be explained by a higher quality applicant pool

kenferry• 15 years ago

That sounds reasonable, but I'm curious if you have data on satisfaction as reported by the founders? As your reputation grows, you may be getting better results partially through having higher quality startups, which would cloud the issue.

ksolanki3• 15 years ago

Some of this may have to do with the quality of startups going in to the batch. As the reputation of YC rises, more and more good-quality startups want to join (rather than go on their own?). This of course doesn't take away the fact that YC has done a great job mentoring and helping early stage startups.

This makes me think (not totally seriously, though) that a YC prep-school for startups might get a lot of attention. There seems to be some room for startups at an even earlier stage than YC would accept now.

ry0ohki• 15 years ago

I'm sure you guys have enough time to dedicate to the companies, but it does lose a little of the "exclusivity" for the companies themselves. It used to be I could name every company that came out of a YCombinator class, now it's likely a bunch will go through that I've never heard of.

daniel_levine• 15 years ago

I am obviously a fan of YC. But, I would caution putting too much weight on what investors tell you or even their investment activity. At this point you are such a big deal, there is incentive to tell you whatever you want to hear.

Interestingly, much like investment portfolios (and most other things), investor opinion quality falls under some distribution. The opinions of a very small number of very no-nonsense, intelligent ones is probably the best indicator of batch quality. The rest matter very little.

On a related note, I think the distribution curve for YC batches probably shifts a minute amount to the right each batch but mostly fattens. Then, the range of investor opinions coupled with a growing positive bias creates what seems like a uniform larger shift to the right. Just speculation though.

jmjerlecki2• 15 years ago

I think its just a mark of the times. Top talent is focusing on creating new ventures. I think if the quality of businesses is on par with the last batches – and I am sure it is, if not higher – it's not a problem. I assume the talent level is equal to previous years so if the teams submitted their ideas two years ago they would have been accepted. I would focus less on the number and more on the increasing success of Y Combinator.

ZackOfAllTrades• 15 years ago

Obvious retort: YC is not just about the attention of PG and Friends. The summation of prestige, money in the present and, likely, in the future, and YC network alone still put a company in a different world.

Question: Will YC pick people who need heaps of attention just to succeed? (My) Answer: Probably not. YC people are called "relentlessly resourceful" for a reason. They will succeed somehow with or without hours of coaching and mentoring by the YC folks. This probably translates into less office time than you would expect from 60+ companies.

But I've never been through it, so I don't really know the answer. There are some brilliant people I've met who couldn't do the simplest of things. What little attention a group needs in one area might be made up for in another.

edit: a sentence had no subject.

jmjerlecki2• 15 years ago

That would put Yuri on the hook for what $9 million this time around?

johnrob• 15 years ago

The interesting bit is that $9 million is a normal amount for one company's series B round. In this case, that money is going to (in theory) benefit 60 companies. That is a big change that could have a significant impact.

abstractbill• 15 years ago

None of Y Combinators competitors have anything like that to offer new entrepreneurs.

Y Combinator competitors would be foolish to try to compete on the money axis anyway - the cash has always been minimally important. They would do much better by identifying and focusing on YC's actual weaknesses.

neurotech1• 15 years ago

Agreed 100%. Every program is different, but trying to imitate YC is not going to work as well.

One area of innovation is to encourage more hardware/software combination start-ups. eg. WakeMate

phlux• 15 years ago

Agreed, this is why I am more encouraged by others such as RockHealth where they have a very specific vertical they focus on.

The market, needs, barriers etc are wildly different in the consumer internet and mobile space than in health care -- and something like RockHealth is greatly needed so that vertical can mature.

stevenj4• 15 years ago

What are YC's weaknesses?

pg15• 15 years ago

The biggest is probably the meta-weakness of not focusing on any specific market. How much that matters depends on how unusual the market is. Education, for example, is a very unusual market, and Imagine K12 has a unique advantage in the network of schools they have access to.

sampsonjs• 15 years ago

Acting like a college admissions board, instead of seeking out and meeting entrepreneurs year round?

cheez• 15 years ago

Not-a-bubble!

Seriously though, there are so many software startups these days. Time to get into something else?

stygianguest• 15 years ago

For a second I thought 60+ was referring to an age. That would be real news.

pauldisneyiv• 15 years ago

Most everyone trying to get accepted by YC is familiar with PG, his writings, and the YC partners experience regarding startups. It's a primary reason many apply.

Respect that PG and the other founders know how to scale the program and handle the workload. They have all the experience of running YC, while each of us has none.

They would be the first to limit their startup count if that needed to happen.

shawnee_• 15 years ago

The more popular and powerful YC becomes, the more it becomes evident that there's an emerging niche in the market for facilitator-type enterprises doing what YC does. Something akin to mentorprising; PG et al are mentorprisers of

I guess this is to be expected as geek culture becomes more mainstream.

pyrhho• 15 years ago

mentorpreneurs?

ecuzzillo• 15 years ago

I don't know if this data is available, but I'd be interested to see what percentage of this class was incorporated before applying, and what percentage got incorporated as part of the process.

Also interesting would be what percentage of this class include repeat YC founders.

pg15• 15 years ago

I think there are 7 alumni doing YC again this summer.

abbasmehdi7• 15 years ago

Why? I mean under what circumstances would you (a YC alum) rinse repeat?

stevenj4• 15 years ago

I wish I could invest in YC.

dominostars• 15 years ago

Then pull a Yuri

stevenj4• 15 years ago

Yuri Milner (as an individual and not via DST-Global), along with SV Angel's Start Fund, invested in the individual companies that participated in YC -- not in YC directly.

Though Sequoia Capital is a LP in YC.

- - -

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2156560

http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/28/yuri-milner-sv-angel-offer-...

scorbrid• 15 years ago

Anyone know what the chances of them taking someone who applied late might be? We just heard about Y Combinator and applied a couple days ago. Their information is vague on this only saying that chances are very slim. Probably more slim now that they are taking 60 off the top.

rms• 15 years ago

Only if you would have been a true stand-out application in the regular round. Definitely more slim.

Y Combinator Accepts Record 60+ New Startups For Summer 2011

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