[tim333]

I think they are both winning. Googling gives "The 2024 Y Combinator (YC) top companies have a combined valuation of $458 billion. In 2023, these companies generated a total revenue of $57.2 billion." Which is not bad starting from basically nothing 20 years ago. I don't think the S&P is doing badly either.

[fakedang]

Plot a graph of the companies against their revenue and profit numbers and you'll end up with 2 massively skewed incline curves. Plot a graph of their companies which are public, and they're mostly trading below their debut.

YC did do the right thing (investing in super early stage startups) at the right time (ZIRP environment), but now with the proliferation of too many startups and applicants, I'm not so certain on how much of a future it has with getting the next best thing. Already seeing quite a few startups that either bootstrapped or raised without YC, while a number of YC companies are stuck in pivot loops.

[worksonmymach]

I like this metric. YC doesn't own all of that but that doesn't matter for this exercise. That $458 billion is disjointed. It cannot move as one (when needed) like say Microsoft can. It cannot buy GitHub or OpenAI. But then it wont self distruct either. That is both a plus and minus.

[tim333]

Yeah. I think YC's ownership is of the order of 3%.