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Ask HN: How Effective is YC? (For Research Project)

6 points by dhalp ↗ HN
I am writing a research paper answering the question: "of companies that have participated in the Y-Combinator process, what has made some companies jump into a high level of success, while others have just remained at a mediocre success level? Moreover, what defines a high level of success within the startup industry?” I am hoping to interview as many founders as will let me, as well as stir some discussion about this question on HN itself.

3 comments

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staunch
YC's big offerings are advice, investor connections, and press attention. My guess is that the outcome of YC companies can be summarized as something like:

    product execution * market opportunity * utilization of YC offerings
Dropbox and Airbnb are A+, A+, A+. Everyone else is some lower grade in at least one area.
dhalp
Thanks, You mention these three "categories" that I could possibly grade companies on. That sounds rather interesting. How would you suggest I get data or a system to grade these?

Also, do you really think that Dropbox and Airbnb are the only A+ companies? dont you think that companies not worth a billion dolars can still have been successfull in all categories and maybe just didnt have as large of a market to tap into?

staunch
I actually meant Airbnb/Dropbox were A+ on Product/Market/YC utilization not the three things YC does for you.

As for how to create interesting research maybe you could setup a simple survey and let HN users grade YC startups in some way like this. I bet the results would be at least interesting.