"But the founders in the first batch turned out to be surprisingly good. And great people too. "
I'd love to read a "where are they now" post on the first couple batches of founders, along with some quotes from them.
I'd love to read a "where are they now" post on the first couple batches of founders, along with some quotes from them.
Kiko - Acquired by Tucows, team founded Justin.tv
Loopt - Raised 15million in Series A and B financing, at it's peak was valued at $500m, sold for $40m to Green Dot
Simmery - Closed. Founder went back to uni.
Infogami - Merged with Reddit.
MemAmp - Never launched, one founder (Chris) joined reddit one (Zak) went back to uni.
FireCrawl - Never launched, team founded TextPayMe and got acquired by amazon.
ClickFacts - YC stake acquired by private investors because YC wasn't a good fit. Company still exists.
Reddit is the most prominent. It's had a huge impact although from what I understand it hasn't done extremely well financially.
That's quite a halo effect that has prevented you from seeing the true "success rate".
Where are you getting 5 acquisitions from?
Reddit, Loopt basically made out.
Infogami merged with Reddit. That's essentially a save face maneuver and doesn't exactly signal success.
Clickfacts - "YC stake acquired by private investors" doesn't sound like that would be a win but a break even. More like "take it off our hands".
Kiko - Sold in an ebay auction for 258,000.
http://gigaom.com/2006/09/05/tucows-bought-kiko/
http://tucowsinc.com/news/2006/09/why-we-bought-kikocom/
I'd give it 2.1 out of 8.
The founders of Loopt, the Reddits, and Justin.tv have done a lot for the YC program (and for startups in general) going forward; arguably these 3 moderate successes financially for YC but having very involved alumni might be worth more than a huge financial success which didn't stay involved with YC.
"Wow, that's phenomenal. In 7 years, out of 8 companies there were 5 acquisitions (and a couple mergers). I'm sure any VC would be ecstatic to have that kind of success rate."
I don't see how that statement has anything to do with the value of the founders.
He said "5 acquisitions" not "2 (or 3) acquisitions and additionally they have very involved alumni.