BenjaminTodd

That's a great point. If you read this article and think "Now I'm going to apply to YC and do good!", you've probably got lower chances of success than the average YC founder.

That's one reason we point out that the expected value mainly depends on your chances of being the next Dropbox or AirBnb, which probably involves having a huge passion for fixing a particular problem.

On the other hand, I don't think the information should have no impact on decisions. For instance, I think someone at college could read this, and set themselves on a path towards becoming the type of person who makes a good entrepreneur. They could learn to program, hang out around startup people, try out their ideas. They could find a problem and become passionate about it.

It's not just the donations. It seems likely startups produce lots of economic value by developing new products, and the extent to which you do that is somewhat correlated with how much money you earn. That's another reason to consider the non-risk-adjusted average outcome.

Not saying it's not impressive either way!

Good point that the question is much less valuable from the perspective of YC partners. From that perspective, all that matters is that the companies perform well in the end. It matters more from the perspective of the applicants. Though even then, because the costs of joining YC are low, it's probably not a big issue for many people.

Agree the success rates would be hard to compare. You'd need to have some other proxies for eventual success besides profits.

Excellent point that if you can show you significantly helped the most successful couple of companies (which account for 80%+ of the value), and there were no other large successes among the people you rejected, then the job is done. You've shown YC increases the expected value of the companies you select.

That's a good point - most of the compensation is in equity, which is non-liquid, which makes it significantly less valuable than salary.

You can get a good idea of that here, plus the stats in the summary: http://80000hours.org/blog/341-how-much-do-y-combinator-foun...

I think you should seriously consider doing this. It's the best way to measure the true impact of YC on the companies it selects. Otherwise, it's hard to know to what extent you're just picking the most successful teams vs. genuinely making the teams more likely to succeed.

Addition: To avoid having to completely reject people, you could take randomly select half to enter immediately, and let the other half enter in one year. Then you could measure the difference between the two groups after a year.

Definitely true that the median can't expect to earn much. In fact, looking at the data, we can see that about 70% exit with only their salaries (typically under $100k).

Like we say in the summary, since all the value is in the tail, an individual should be thinking in terms of 'what are my chances of creating a new DropBox or AirBnB' i.e. revolutionising an industry.

The problem is, no-one knows who exactly that's going to be.

This post shows that getting into YC provides some useful information. It shows you're now in a reference class of ppl who can be expected to earn millions of dollars per year (although the median is still zero).

Beyond that, there's lots more to consider when judging whether to become a tech entrepreneur e.g. are you exceptionally technically able, gritty, able to accept risk, in possession of a potentially huge idea etc. If you got into YC but it's clear you'll never be Drew Houston, then your expected outcome is probably still pretty low.

There's quite a bit of data on the distribution in the post as well. Quoting from the summary:

Most of the returns have gone to a tiny minority of super-successes. The founders of AirBnB, Dropbox and Stripe are worth about US$7 billion, about 78% of all founders’ equity, although they account for 0.5% of the companies.

Outside of the most successful companies, it was still possible to earn significant returns. 12% of companies from the first five years of Y Combinator are now worth US$40 million or more, and a further 10% have sold for US$5-40 million. The remainder probably earned little more than their (low) salaries.