Y Combinator startups have raised $7B with a $65B total valuation; 8 are $1B unicorns

Y Combinator (YC), the Silicon Valley-based startup accelerator and seed fund, has answered a question it says it gets asked a lot: What is the fundraising and valuation status of all startups that have come through its doors?

Launched in 2005 by Paul Graham, Trevor Blackwell, Jessica Livingston, and Robert Morris, YC initially ran two programs — one in California, and one in Massachusetts. The latter of these closed in 2009.

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Over the past 10 years, YC has funded and helped kickstart 940 startups, including Airbnb, Dropbox, Reddit, Instacart, and Coinbase. Though many startups enter YC for the mentoring, the accelerator also invests $120,000 for 7 percent equity in the companies.

Sam Altman, the Y Combinator president who replaced Paul Graham in 2014, has published some numbers that help demonstrate the role the accelerator has played in giving startups their big break. Though he is probably right when he says that “these are very imperfect indicators of success.”

Still, they make for an interesting read.

Though it was not included in the official dataset, Altman did take to Twitter to reveal that almost a third of the 940 companies it has funded have since closed.

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Oh, another important stat: about 300 of the companies we have funded have shut down.

— Sam Altman (@sama) August 26, 2015

Digging into the numbers, YC companies have raised $7 billion to date, with a combined total value of $65 billion. Eight of these companies are valued at more than $1 billion, which transports them into the much-coveted “unicorn” status, while 40 are valued at more than $100 million.

To have eight so-called “unicorns” out of a cohort of 940 is pretty impressive. And if you’re wondering what these companies are, well, you’ll no doubt know most of them:

• Airbnb: The peer-to-peer home rental service is worth $25 billion, after a $1.5 billion raise in June.
• Dropbox: The cloud storage service is worth $10 billion, off the back of a $250 million funding round last year.
• Docker: The enterprise-focused open-source “container” startup raised $95 million in April, valuing the company at $1 billion.
• Machine Zone: The game developer was reportedly valued at $3 billion following a raise last year.
• Stripe: The online payments processor is said to be valued at $5 billion following a recent raise.
• Instacart: The crowdsourced grocery delivery startup is thought to be valued at $2 billion, following a big raise back in January.
• Zenefits: The human resources (HR) software startup raised a whopping $500 million in May, bringing the company value to $4.5 billion.
• Twitch: The esports streaming company is actually now an Amazon subsidiary following its acquisition by the Internet giant last year.

 

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