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Comment by mikeryan | Hacker News Reader

What percentage are actually profitable?

Don't get me wrong the 74% is impressive, but I'd expect a large percentage of YC projects to get additional funding. They've already cleared a bunch of hurdles and have a strong team backing them.

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7 out of 27, so 26%. Bear in mind that at this stage most that are profitable are only barely so.

I think that's awesome, I had 5 as a decent number in my head.

does "profitable" mean "paying the $20/mo to slicehost" as some people around here seem to think? or, paying the founders a ramen wage?

Edit: nm, I see the answer below.

It'd also be interesting to see what % are profitable out of all YC companies.

I saw this on another thread http://spreadsheets0.google.com/ccc?key=t_toYuVyy6fci0MAiIaZ... which shows exits, but it'd be kinda interesting to hear if any of the non-exits are raking in cash. (I know, I know, they're unlikely to tell us really).

I don't have accurate data for YC startups overall, though you can assume that any that haven't raised series A and are more than a year or two old are profitable, since otherwise they wouldn't have been able to continue working on the startup.

There are a few that are making really large amounts of money, but I know they wouldn't like it if I outed them.

That's cool. It's sort of a shame that the "We're really profitable now and don't need any more funding" doesn't get as much/any press compared with "We just took more funding".

Worked for Balsamiq.

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