$ 4.7 billion

It was in the amount indicated in the title that Paul Graham estimated the value of young companies that received funding from Y Combinator, of which he is co-founder.

If two weeks ago, during the TechCrunch Disrupt conference held in New York, Charlie Rose (Charlie Rose) did not begin to ask Paul questions provoking answers regarding the activities of the incubator, we probably would not have learned these intriguing details. But Graham, as a person who is serious about his activities and his own words, dropped the phrase on the scene about “about $ 3 billion of the total cost of Y Combinator start-ups”, and saying “A”, could not help but add “B”. That is what he did in the official blog of the incubator, shedding light on how successful the Y Combinator projects were.

In short, the numbers are as follows: the 21 companies that showed the greatest success are now valued at a total of $ 4.7 billion, which makes the average cost of each of the 210 startups that have graduated to be $ 22.4 million. Taking into account the fact that the average volume of injections into a startup from the side of Y Combinator is (before Milner’s proposal is about him a little lower) $ 15,000 - these figures make a strong impression. In the majority of incubated startups, Y holds a share from 2 to 10%; nevertheless, in some very large and successful startups, the incubator has more shares.

Paul Graham also explains the method by which they were counted - as I wrote earlier, the incubator financed 316 startups, including the last round (ended this summer), but excluding companies that received money during the last calendar year. . The reason for this is simple - most of the companies that received money in previous rounds do not yet have an official estimate of their value, but each of them (100%) took $ 150,000 offered by Yuri Milner and Ron Conway ( Start Fund ). Therefore, the numbers shown here were calculated on the basis of 10% of the total mass of startups, the most successful 10% (and not 10 startups, which seems logical, because today the cost of one Dropbox, or, say, Airbnb covers almost half of the total mass of young fund companies).
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“The real lesson we learned during the existence of the Y Combinator is that we now know how to determine our own performance. We have been working for 6 years, and the numbers could easily be 3 times more or less. Outputs of startups are unpredictable, as well as the income of their investors, because it is very difficult to say whether success was expected, or is it just luck. After 6 years of existence, all I can say is that while the numbers look very encouraging. ”

And finally, the last. In total, Y Combinator has invested as much or as much as $ 5 million in all 316 companies that have ever worked (or worked) with the incubator. I am sure everyone will be able to calculate the effectiveness and success of this fund.

Thanks to TechCrunch , ReadWriteWeb , Y Combinator