PG tweeted: "I bet 3 founder generations is not the record. Anyone know of a longer chain?" Challenge accepted. FounderTrace maps the entire YC founder genealogy — 6,000+ companies, showing who worked where before founding what. Discover 4-generation chains, see which startups are "founder factories" (Stripe alone spawned 50+ YC companies), and explore the family trees of tech's most successful companies. Vibe coded with Crustdata APIs. Free. No signup.
Hey Product Hunt! 👋
This started with a tweet from Paul Graham.
Last month, PG posted: "I met a startup today whose founders had previously worked at Coinbase and Scale. And Brian Armstrong of Coinbase had himself worked at Airbnb. I bet 3 'generations' is not the record though. Anyone know of a longer chain?"
The tweet got 268K views. Everyone was curious.
So I vibe coded the answer in a weekend using https://crustdata.com.
FounderTrace maps the entire YC founder genealogy — who worked where, who founded what, and how these chains connect across 6,000+ YC companies.
What PG's AI found:
The longest chain is 4 generations:
Auctomatic (W07) → GoCardless (S11) → Duffel (S18) → Vizzly (S22)
What FounderTrace shows you:
- Visual family trees for every major YC company
- Which startups are "founder factories" (Stripe alone has spawned 50+ YC companies)
- The hidden connections between the companies you use every day
Why you might care:
- Founders: See who came before you in your "lineage"
- Hiring: Find talent from companies that produce founders
- Investors: Spot patterns in successful founder backgrounds
- Curious minds: It's honestly just fun to explore
Crustdata gave me access to enriched LinkedIn data for millions of profiles — work history, company connections, the works. Without that, this would've taken months instead of a weekend.
The entire site is free. No signup. PG's original tweet is right there on the landing page as a reminder of how this started.
Report
I didn’t know I wanted this! I'll definitely dig into this later. Now I feel pressure to keep my founder tree going haha.
Crustdata
I didn’t know I wanted this! I'll definitely dig into this later. Now I feel pressure to keep my founder tree going haha.