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Show HN: Foundertrace – chain of YC startups founded by its employees (foundertrace.com)

39 points by loondri ↗ HN
Inspired by PG’s tweet about a chain of 4 YC startups where the founder worked at a YC startup, I vibe coded and generated these genealogy chains for all ~6k YC startups. And to make these trees easily accessible I packaged them into a hosted webapp.

Few noteworthy YC startups which have had huge impact in YC ecosystem

Airbnb - 83 YC startups spawned

Stripe - 67 YC startups spawned

Dropbox - 50 YC startups spawned

Justin.tv/Twitch - 47 YC startups spawned

More recently founded YC startups which have spawned a lot more YC startups

Rappi - 21 YC startups spawned

Brex - 20 YC startups spawned

Scale AI - 19 YC startups spawned

14 comments

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loondri
PG's tweet that inspired this https://x.com/paulg/status/1994904099566031300
fleahunter
Interesting point about the chains of YC startups. It really makes you think about how interconnected the startup ecosystem is. I wonder if there's an unspoken pressure to “keep it in the family,” so to speak, where founders might feel inclined to hire from their previous startups, or even lean on those networks when starting something new.

I've noticed trends where certain skills or experiences seem to bubble up in waves – like when a specific tech stack becomes popular and then a bunch of startups pop up around it. It’s almost like there’s a breeding ground effect happening.

And what about the concept of mentorship? Do you think these 'family trees' could lead to more structured mentorship, where founders from successful startups actively guide the next generation? Could be an interesting angle to explore!

I’m curious about Edge cases too. Like, what happens when a founder breaks away from the traditional path, either founding a startup without that chain or maybe even pivoting away from the typical YC model? It makes these genealogies feel both fascinating and a touch limiting. I love seeing these connections getting mapped out, but part of me wonders if we might miss some innovative outliers by focusing too much on these chains.

twosdai
Yc founder, there's not really any pressure like this that exists. Basically i think it's a proximity thing and consistent exposure to a specific section of the startup world that makes this happen.

Basically all those people would go all the same networking events sponsored by yc. There's not pressure so much as these people all have frequent and paid for, opportunities to "hang out" and talk about tech stuff together. Its possible you could define this as "pressure" but I think it's more of who you hangout with rather than some top down implicit force.

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ien24sdq
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1potatonagger
The etymology of "elite" is relevant, here--if you nose what I mean.
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conditionnumber
Very cool! It looks like you've purchased the data from a vendor, is that right? I love graphs of all kinds, so I was hoping to fetch the raw data and have a look at it with pyvis/networkx.
loondri
Have mentioned the source at the top right header. Its by Crustdata.
alexander2002
Very creative name choice by

Dasha Cherepennikova to