The Rarest Thing a YC Company Can Be
by•
YC has funded 6,000+ companies. Only ~4% have gone public.
I built a filter for it inside ExploreYC. The list is shorter than you think. Some patterns I noticed:
- Most IPOs came from B2B SaaS, fintech, and biotech
- The median time from YC batch to IPO: 7 years
- 3 batches produced 80% of all public exits
go explore the outliers: https://www.exploreyc.com/analytics
what batch do you think punched the hardest?
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nice addition to ExploreYC. I can already see myself spending way too much time looking through the analytics and comparing different batches.
@bryan_williamson3 A founder freind of mine loves digging into YC data. I am definitely sending this over because I know they will enjoy exploring these trends.
@bryan_williamson3 I would not have guessed that only around 4% made it to the public markets. It really highlights how exceptional those companies are.
I wasn't expecting the median time to IPO to be around 7 years. That's a great reminder that even the biggest YC success stories usually take much longer than people assume.
ExploreYC
@alicia_klein haha yea - i actually think 7 years is pretty fast TBH
Interesting insight.
The 7-year median is a good reminder that even “fast-growing” startup outcomes usually take much longer than people outside the ecosystem expect.
I’d be curious to compare IPO-heavy batches against market timing too. Some batches probably benefited not only from stronger companies, but also from launching into the right funding and public market cycles.
ExploreYC
@prashant_patil14 but that is fast, think about it :D
Interesting lens. The IPO filter is useful because it forces people to look past the volume of YC companies and study the smaller set that actually scaled all the way through. I’d be curious to see the same view by business model and time-to-liquidity, because that might reveal patterns that are more useful for founders than the headline outcome alone.