Y Combinator is one of the truly innovative incubators, or seed accelerators, on the West Coast. They started in 2005 and provide seed money, advice, and connections at two three-month programs per year. In exchange, Y Combinator take an average of about 6% of the company’s equity. So, how successful are they? To date, Y Combinator has funded over 450 startups, including stars like Dropbox and Airbnb. In a recent tweet Paul Graham, one of Y Combinator’s founders, shared some interesting data on the number of YC companies that were sold or valued at $40 million. The data is broken down according to year funded by YC, and it seems in 2011 and 2012 there were 16 startups with a pretty nice valuation already. Could this be because YC is a great accelerator, or that there is a tech bubble in Silicon Valley? Anyhow, the data is cool. Take a further look here: http://mattermark.com/number-of-y-combinator-companies-sold-for-over-40m-by-year-funded/
