Y Combinator (YC) is an American startup accelerator and venture capital firm founded in 2005 by Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston, Robert Tappan Morris and Trevor Blackwell. It invests a fixed amount in each company it accepts, runs batches of startups through a short program, and also operates the tech forum Hacker News (Wikipedia). #YC and #YCombinator are used by founders announcing their batch, by investors and by tech media.
Origin
In his essay “How Y Combinator Started” (March 2012), Paul Graham dates the idea to an evening walk: “On March 11 2005, Jessica and I were walking home from dinner in Harvard Square.” He writes that the firm was at first called Cambridge Seed, and that the first batch was run as the Summer Founders Program, because “a summer program for undergrads seemed the fastest way to do it” (paulgraham.com).
YC initially ran concurrent programs in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Mountain View, California, then closed the Cambridge program in January 2009 and centralised in Silicon Valley (Wikipedia).
The Standard Deal
YC’s published terms are the most-searched fact about it. The firm’s deal page states: “we invest $500,000,” of which “$125,000 of our investment converts into a fixed 7%, and the other $375,000 is invested on an uncapped MFN SAFE.”
| Component | Amount | Instrument |
|---|---|---|
| Fixed-equity investment | $125,000 | Converts into a fixed 7% |
| Additional investment | $375,000 | Uncapped MFN SAFE |
| Total | $500,000 |
So the 7% applies to the $125,000 portion only, not to the full $500,000.
Leadership Timeline
| Year | Leader | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2005 | Founded by Graham, Livingston, Morris and Blackwell | Wikipedia |
| 2014 | Paul Graham appoints Sam Altman president | Wikipedia |
| 2019 | Geoff Ralston succeeds Altman as president | Wikipedia |
| January 2023 | Garry Tan becomes president and CEO | Wikipedia |
How #YC Is Used
Founders post “YC” plus their batch code when announcing acceptance or a launch, and YC’s Demo Day, where each batch presents to investors, generates a burst of the tag. Wikipedia lists Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Dropbox, Reddit, Stripe and Twitch among companies started through YC, and reports that YC now selects four batches of companies per year (Wikipedia). Several have their own entries: #Airbnb and #Stripe. For more on the alumni, see #YCombinatorStartups; for the broader culture, see #Startup and #UnicornStartup.