Y Combinator

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
This article is about the venture capital firm. For the mathematical term, see fixed point combinator.
Y Combinator
Type Limited liability company
Founded 2005
Headquarters Mountain View, CA
Industry Venture Capital
Products Investments
Website www.ycombinator.com

Y Combinator is an American seed-stage startup funding firm, started in 2005 by Paul Graham, Robert Morris, Trevor Blackwell, and Jessica Livingston. Y Combinator provides seed money, advice, and connections at two 3-month programs per year. In exchange, they take an average of about 6% of the company's equity[1]. Unusual among startup funding firms, Y Combinator provides very little money—$17,000 for startups with 2 founders and $20,000 for those with 3 or more[2]. This reflects Graham's conviction that between free software, dynamic languages, the web, and Moore's Law, the cost of founding a startup has greatly decreased[3].

Y Combinator was started after Graham gave a talk at his alma mater, Harvard (where he earned a PhD in Computer Science), which became, "How to Start a Startup".[4] He suggested founders seek seed funding from "angel investors", preferably those who had made money in technology. He half-jokingly added "but not me", but, feeling guilty[5], he soon after organized Y Combinator to offer seed funding to startups.

From its inception to 2008, one program was held in each of the US cities of Cambridge, Massachusetts and Mountain View, California; in January 2009, Paul Graham announced that henceforth the Cambridge program would be closed and all future programs would take place in Silicon Valley [6].

As of June 2009, Y Combinator had funded over 118 [7] [8] startups, the best known of which are reddit, Loopt, and Justin.tv[2]. The number of startups funded in each cycle has been gradually increasing. The first cycle in summer 2005 had eight startups. In the summer 2009 cycle, there were 26.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Running a Hatchery for Replicant Hackers". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/21/business/businessspecial2/21startup.html?pagewanted=print. Retrieved 2008-08-27. 
  2. ^ a b "Y Combinator Frequently Asked Questions". http://ycombinator.com/faq.html. 
  3. ^ "Planning for a Crush of Startups". BusinessWeek. http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/oct2007/sb20071019_378998.htm?chan=technology_technology+index+page_top+stories. Retrieved 2008-08-27. 
  4. ^ How to Start a Startup
  5. ^ "Hungry entrepreneurs eat up Y Combinator's help". USA Today. http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/money/20070718/b_ycombinator.art.htm. Retrieved 2008-08-26. 
  6. ^ "Y Combinator website, "California Year-Round"". http://ycombinator.com/ycca.html. Retrieved 2009-01-29. 
  7. ^ "Y Combinator - What we do". http://ycombinator.com/about.html. 
  8. ^ "Seed Stage Accelerator companies". http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AkkhSN3vaY4jdF90b1l1Vnl5NmZjaTBNQWlJYVozMEE&hl=en. 

[edit] External links

  • Company website
  • Hacker News - Startup and Technology news site hosted by Y Combinator
  • Search YC - An independent project to build a search utility for Y Combinator's Hacker News
v • d • e
Private equity and venture capital investment firms
Investment strategy 2005 Penny Obv Unc D.png
History
Investors
Private equity firms · Venture capital firms · Portfolio companies


Stub icon 1 Stub icon 2 This article about a financial services corporation of the United States is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_Combinator"
Languages