[HN Gopher] The YC Summer 2022 Batch ___________________________________________________________________ The YC Summer 2022 Batch Author : todsacerdoti Score : 79 points Date : 2022-09-07 15:01 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.ycombinator.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.ycombinator.com) | simonebrunozzi wrote: | > For the first time since the Winter 2020 batch, the Summer 2022 | batch was in person. | | Nice. | | > For the Summer 2022 batch, we received 19,000 applications from | founders around the world and funded 240. | | Acceptance rate of 1.26%. For context, Harvard has a 3.19% [0] | | > Demo day | | is on September 7th and 8th. [1] | | > United States: 140 startups, India: 19 startups, United | Kingdom: 11 startups, Israel: 8 startups | | Interesting how the country breakup does not represent country | GDPs at all. I would expect more from Germany or Japan if it were | the case. But it shouldn't surprise people who are familiar with | YC and tech startups in general. | | Besides Michael's post, which provides some details, I think it | would be interesting to hear from YC their view on the upcoming | months/years of high uncertainty in geopolitical and economical | terms, and how is this going to affect companies that apply for | YC, and want to graduate and go build great companies. | | [0]: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/4/1/admissions- | class... | | [1]: https://www.ycombinator.com/demoday/faq/ | epolanski wrote: | All I see is that the representation comes from countries where | english is spoken by the majority of adults, not the case for | germany, definitely not japan. | herval wrote: | I know a couple people from Germany doing startups - a couple | of them told me they don't bother w/ programs like this because | they can get a grant from the government, w/o giving out any | equity. Or just bootstrap, since their costs are lower, free | healthcare, etc. | | They tend look for later stage funding (which is when you | realize that the power of YC is actually the credentials. Been | there!) | Nanana909 wrote: | The US also provides such a program: | https://seedfund.nsf.gov/ | | > Or just bootstrap, since their costs are lower, free | healthcare, etc. | | Germany does not have free healthcare. From the employer | side, the employer is responsible for paying 7.5% of | employees income. Among numerous other taxes you'll need to | pay for each employee you bring on. | | I think a lot of it is probably just the language barrier for | YC specifically. Not that German founders don't speak | English, but it's a whole different ball game trying to fund | a startup and hire talent in a country where prospective | industry contacts and even employees will need to speak | German in order to really feel at home. Not to mention a | different regulatory environment. That's not to say there | aren't accelerators focusing on Germany, because there are. | But building such a network when YC is based in the US isn't | an overnight thing. | | Whereas in the US/UK it's really trivial to find support, | contacts, and devs from all over the world who are willing to | relocate just by nature of the fact that the local native | language is one they already know. | solarmist wrote: | I don't know anyone that's not from academia that's | successfully applied and gotten a seed fund grant as a | startup (1-3 people trying to get their first funding). | | And articles I've read say a minimum of 80 hours of effort | for the application. | | I've looked at it and it seems very bureaucratic. I believe | there is an entire cottage industry around writing | applications. | lnsru wrote: | Absolutely no hustling culture in Germany. Getting job at | Siemens or BMW or VW group is equal to the great exit for one | billion $. And staying there for few decades. Personally I like | it safe too. | | And the digital culture in general. Fax is still a king, no | fertile ground for SaaS. Hardware ideas are cool, but too risky | compared to any software venture. | spaceman_2020 wrote: | > 7% had more than $50k of monthly revenue when accepted | | Interesting. What's the motivation for applying to YC when you're | already on track to make 600k annually? I know bootstrapped | startups with 20k in revenue and they often have VCs knocking on | their doors | paxys wrote: | YC is a startup accelerator. If you are on track to make 600K | but want 6M instead then there's a lot of value in the program. | TigeriusKirk wrote: | It would be interesting to track this 7% and see how many of | them benefit from YC in tangible ways. | threeseed wrote: | Apparently the increase in valuation from investors post-YC | means that the program pays for itself in terms of dilution. | yashap wrote: | YC is a big-time brand, being a YC company is a powerful stamp | of approval for acquiring customers, hiring and raising further | investment. Go YC first, then get more interest/better terms | from VCs, hire more easily, sell more easily. | mdorazio wrote: | Exposure + validation. It's a desirable credential + guaranteed | press and intros to VCs if you want funding. YC is basically | like going to an Ivy League school for startups at this point. | trollied wrote: | The ecosystem. Being able to interact with other founders, the | exposure you get, advice & help etc. It's not about the money. | Existenceblinks wrote: | > 39% in B2B/Enterprise SaaS | | Business newbie here. Is B2B a broad type of shovels business | (gold rush)? What ratio of B2C/B2B is going to sustain the | economy? (not sure what term of unit to measure here). And how | about if B2B2B is a lot more than B2B2C? | O__________O wrote: | One of the biggest potential boosts to being a YC founder is | launching a B2B startup to prior successful YC companies - | since even landing a few would make a significant impact both | in terms of revenue and easy of future sales. | | Putting aside YC, generally speak B2B businesses have a higher | survival rate than B2C -- which is saying a lot given that | sales cycles in B2B tend to be much, much longer. | | All that said, in my experience, founders with less experience | tend to focus on B2C because by default most people have | experience buying consumer products & services, much fewer have | significant experience buying business services & products. | People tend to focus on what they know. | | As for the B2X2Z keep it simple, find a business you're | familiar with, model the business, then model another, etc -- | the practice in modeling existing business will help you | actually understand how to model a business. I would start with | something like the Business Model Canvas, though no model is | prefect: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Model_Canvas | | Googling "business model canvas examples" or "business model | canvas [a-z]" where a-z is the first letter of a specific | existing business or industry will pull up related examples. | nfw2 wrote: | Not affiliated with YC, but here are some reasons about why B2B | would be more appealing to YC. | | YC offers a big competitive advantage to B2B (especially tech | B2B) through its network. YC offers a large network of | potential customers and early adopters for new or growing B2B | businesses. Access to the YC network makes it easier to get a | B2B off the ground. Many B2B applicants to YC already have some | traction and use YC to help take off. This kind of applicant is | obviously attractive to YC because it is low-risk. | | Also, with B2B companies, it is much easier to avoid the | Achilles Heel of B2C, which is that the cost to acquire a user | ends up being higher than the revenue that user generates. Even | if there is decent product-market fit, consumers generally have | tight budgets. With B2B, one sale can generate thousands in | ARR, which makes hiring a sales team to close those deals | scalable. | threeseed wrote: | The economic model of YC and VC in general demand you be a | billion dollar startup. | | It's significantly easier to do that in B2B versus B2C when | your target customers have deeper wallets. | curo wrote: | There are a lot of consumer products without scalable tech | (e.g., grocery brands, entertainment, fashion, media, etc). | Those consumer companies are B2B customers. | | So a high B2B/B2C ratio on YC (which funds scalable tech) is | probably not indicative of an unsustainable economy. | Existenceblinks wrote: | My question is misleading since I quote the YC's %. I mean, | generally speaking, not particular to YC. So I think as long | as those consumers companies' profit can absorb/buy all of | B2B...2C service chain all the way down, it will keep going? | paxys wrote: | > 43% of the batch were accepted with only an idea | | I would love to hear more details about this lot. A billion+ | people on the planet (including most of this forum I bet) have | "killer" startup ideas and swear they can successfully execute on | them with some money. How exactly does YC judge their merit and | fund them without as much as a working prototype? Do you look at | past history of successful launches? Education/work pedigree? | Personality? It's pretty wild that such founders make up almost | half of the batch. | whatshisface wrote: | YC can afford to take risks and fund people on first | impressions, that's their whole thing if you think about it. | brudgers wrote: | My take is that YC can't afford not to operate that way. | | My impression is the Decision Matrix looks like. | High Low Execution Execution | Good Maybe No Idea Bad Maybe | No Idea | | The idea does not matter much because it is easy to use an | external source for ideas when a team has a bad idea or no | idea. | | On the other hand, there's no external way to fix low | execution. | | The other thing is that it is often hard to tell good new | ideas from bad new ideas in the context of startups. So idea | is often a weak signal. | | As the GP argued, everyone has startup ideas. | dzink wrote: | How many of the idea-only founders were female? | crhulls wrote: | I may be reading between the lines on something you don't | intend, but it seems like this data, in isolation of control | variables, could just end up with an incorrect clickbait | conclusion that YC is sexist. | | For example, someone already made the point that many of | these founders who could raise on just an idea were likely on | their second go around or prior FANG employees. Most founders | have historically been male (not saying this is good - just | matter of fact) and only 17% of engineers at Google are | female (and I think it goes without saying that YC has a bias | towards engineers). | | So if YC has an explicit positive bias towards second time | founders and FAANG employees, you could easily see what | appears to be anti-female bias, but in reality is just | positive indexing towards other attributes that historically | skewed male. This may or may not be the case, and there | probably are instances where there is implicit bias towards | non-positive male-associated traits (macho attitude? | unwarranted overconfidence?) but this data in isolation | doesn't tell us much. | | I'm not saying that diversity is bad, or that we shouldn't be | looking to increase female representation in the founder | community, but we should be careful with understanding cause | vs correlation and maintain intellectual honesty when looking | at statistics. | DelaneyM wrote: | This is a stat I'd love to see. | YetAnotherNick wrote: | Not sure what correlation do you expect? Do you think it | would higher or lower than founders with some progress? | [deleted] | int0x2e wrote: | Just curious - why do assume a correlation (one way or the | other) between these two metrics? | dsr_ wrote: | They didn't assume anything. They asked. First you get the | data, then you can think about correlation. | Judgmentality wrote: | Because humans are imperfect and prone to bias. | mjirv wrote: | My guess is that about 50% are repeat founders and a majority | of the rest are FAANG, Ivy League, or Stanford alums. | | (This is a genuine guess, not a knock on YC) | peyton wrote: | It's probably pretty easy to tell with experience. | presidentender wrote: | My cofounder and I raised (not from YC) on a deck. | | The network was what mattered for this, though. A former | colleague (an exec at my previous job) is also a venture | partner at a credible firm, who introduced me to his network of | VCs and to a number of potential cofounders, including the | person with whom I am now building this company. And my | cofounder's own network is vast, which led to a ton of investor | interest and favorable terms. | | Again: he made a slide deck and used his network and we started | building once we had funding. It doesn't surprise me that YC | companies do likewise. | beebmam wrote: | It's on a deck AND the individuals who present. If you sent | someone a slide deck and nothing else, virtually no one is | going to raise funding on just that. | threeseed wrote: | Interesting no mention of the percentage of solo founders. | | From reports they heavily weigh against them. | nfw2 wrote: | Jared Friedman has recently said each batch generally has over | 10% solo founders. So, it would be considered a meaningful | concern, but certainly not a deal-breaker, especially if the | founder is technical. | | https://www.ycombinator.com/library/7P-does-yc-fund-solo-fou... | andrewstuart wrote: | I wish HN had a "Launch" link at the top in which YC companies | (and maybe other companies) could do launch posts. | | @dang ? | detaro wrote: | YC companies can do launch posts coordinated through dang AFAIK | (which both ensures that there's not to many and that someone | tells them if their pitch style isn't going to work for the | audience) | galkk wrote: | Numbers in demographic breakdown don't add up to 100%? | O__________O wrote: | In case they are update, currently listed as: | | 13% Asian, 3% Black, 6% Hispanic or Latino, 5% Middle Eastern | or North African, 8% Multiracial, 15% South Asian, 29% White | | -- which adds up to be 79% -- not 100%. | Existenceblinks wrote: | Wonder if there is a "other" field in application for e.g. | asian-american? | [deleted] | dmicah wrote: | Not sure if this is what happened here but demographic / | ethnicity questions often have a 'prefer not to say' option. | jypepin wrote: | > 19,000 applications from founders around the world and funded | 240. | | Damn that's a lot of applications to review. Is there any data in | terms of quality of applications? Is there a big part of | spams/very low quality applications or is everything pretty | serious? | elektor wrote: | "2% in Climate, Energy, or Sustainability" | | I know YC is not a governmental agency and their main goal is | profit, but given all that's going on in the world, would've | loved to see a substantially higher number here. | paxys wrote: | Climate tech doesn't fit the YC model (and tech VC model in | general) at all. Projects are too unpredictable and hard to | judge. They need many orders of magnitude greater investment to | get started than a seed fund can provide. And tech VCs can't | really contribute any business expertise in the area. | | It's a lot easier to fund a hundred B2B SaaS apps and wait for | a handful of them to return 1000x in 5 years. | newaccount2021 wrote: | elektor wrote: | Well said. I imagine a group like Lower Carbon Capital | (https://lowercarboncapital.com/) would be better suited to | provide expertise. | rogerkirkness wrote: | The difference is basically a spectrum from pure engineering | to pure science. At first, pure science is really volatile, | where as pure engineering can be a simple matter of talent | and funding. Execution risk is much lower on the engineering | side. There are many climate related issues that are bound by | engineering. | CedarMills wrote: | A lot of climate tech is bs unfortunately. | phlipski wrote: | A lot of tech is bs unfortunately. Fixed it for you! | bko wrote: | A lot of tech is simple, basically a CRUD app. For | instance, there is probably a billion dollar app that will | come out in next 10 years that makes performance reviews | slightly better (e.g. 15five) or maybe a slightly better | chat application (Slack). None of these products relied on | technical leaps, just execution and positioning. | idlewords wrote: | That should make it a natural fit for YC, and only deepens | the mystery. | mdorazio wrote: | > 15% of the companies have a woman founder and 9% of the | founders are women | | The trend continues. I still want to see an objective analysis | for why so few female founders make it through the funnel. I | haven't found any good stats to see if the overall % of startup | founders (regardless of YC participation) is abysmal, if it's the | software focus that acts as a filter, if it's the VC focus, or | something else entirely. | danielmarkbruce wrote: | It might be the wrong question. The right one might be "why are | so many males making irrational decisions?" | | Doing a startup is likely irrational on the whole. The cause of | such irrational behavior is debatable/unknown. | | Giving up your entire life in a quest to make CEO is likely | irrational overall. | | Giving up your life to be a terrorist is almost certainly | irrational. | | There seems to be several irrational things males do more | frequently.... Sort of extremist behaviors. Females might just | engage in less irrational behavior overall. | epolanski wrote: | There's less female entrepeneurs and business owners in | general. Cultural and biological factors are important there. | rafale wrote: | A guy from Google explained this a few years ago. He got | fired/cancelled. | sokoloff wrote: | What's the makeup of the applicant pool? | | If the top of the YC funnel is 6% female, we would be asking a | different question than if it's 18% female. | dzink wrote: | I second this question as well. | mdorazio wrote: | I don't think they post that stat every year. In 2015 it was | about 12%: https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/yc-demographics | | But that doesn't really help answer my bigger question, which | is why is _that_ number so low? | | I did find one stat showing about 20% of US businesses with | employees are female-owned, which is itself troubling and | leads to more "why?". | siphor wrote: | Looks like about 20% of comp sci grads in the US are women. | Seems like the very simple "why". As for that why... idk | probably need to change how kids grow up en-masse. My | guess, which probably isn't worth much, is it'll happen | slowly, but will probably take a generation or two. | | There's probably also some genetically encoded differences | on risk-averseness (another guess). FAANG is a great gig | and is much more predictable and stable. | nfw2 wrote: | Another potential difference could be prioritization of | work-life balance, which would generally be better at a | FAANG company than a startup. | dsr_ wrote: | Cultural factors consistently swamp genetic explanations | for things which aren't obvious morphology and biology. | YetAnotherNick wrote: | Consistently is a big word without any proof. After all | scientists have found many of gender norm in nearest | animals and completely isolated human tribes. | [deleted] | xwdv wrote: | 30% of the batch moving to the Bay Area is a pretty low rate. | | It's time to start considering a move to a better location. The | Bay Area is no longer in style, and San Francisco is a dump, and | somehow way too expensive. | kansface wrote: | Handshake deals require two hands. You need the proximity to | the VCs if nothing else. | xwdv wrote: | 70% of the batch didn't think so. | int0x2e wrote: | I would argue moving would require moving the VC industry as | well, but if anyone can do it, YC would be the one to get it | done. Having said that, it's going to be a real challenge - | SV's prominence is quite massive and long-held. Founders would | need this new location to offer similar benefits in terms of | talent, investor access, etc. to make it worth their while. | blhack wrote: | Where do you suggest? | xwdv wrote: | Come to Austin. | threeseed wrote: | Female participation in Engineering/IT is already | unacceptably low. | | Texas making abortion illegal would discourage women from | wanting to work there exacerbating the problem. | xwdv wrote: | So it should have little to no impact. | jacobriis wrote: | How often are persons who self-identify as having the | capacity for pregnancy having abortions that a two hour | flight to Denver won't do? | bruceb wrote: | It is hassle for women, more so for poor women who might | not have money laying around for flights and hotels. It | is also the signal it sends about who thinks you should | have no choice. Republicans were probably on their way to | taking the house before Roe was struck down. Its the one | issue for some that overrides other considerations. | csa wrote: | > How often are persons who self-identify as having the | capacity for pregnancy having abortions that a two hour | flight to Denver won't do? | | Iirc, anyone who knowingly assists this person in getting | to Denver for the abortion is exposing themselves to | criminal liability via the "community" whistleblower | laws. | | https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/workers- | abo... | | "Texas is front and center in the abortion rights battle, | drawing attention last year for a new whistleblower-type | law (SB 8) that lets an individual sue anyone who "aids | or abets" an abortion and receive a $10,000 reward." | jacobriis wrote: | Why would you tell your Uber driver you're traveling to | have an abortion? Probably TMI even without SB 8. | dang wrote: | Please don't post flamebait to HN. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | threeseed wrote: | 1) The standard deal gives much more money to startups and so | based on what I've see on Crunchbase many startups are simply | not raising seed rounds post-YC. So that negates the need to | move to a VC hotspot like SF at least in the beginning. | | 2) COVID has demonstrated that you can make remote work and | that a sizeable percentage of employees (especially in IT | sector) will only accept a remote role. Many startups simply | won't have offices or headquarters at all. | | 3) As was pointed out by Jason Calcanis last week a lot of the | people who publicly told the world they were leaving SF for | Texas, Florida etc have been quietly moving back. Despite all | of SF's many problems there isn't anywhere else that can | replicate the critical mass of talent and network that it | provides. | tmpz22 wrote: | To spell it out further: | | The SFBA is a great place to live _if you have money_. And as | long as business continues to revolve around _people who have | money_ , the Bay Area will remain a perfectly valid place to | do business. | | --- | | I don't think its even about the "tech talent" for most | start-up projects, as you can certainly source this remotely | to an adequate level to meet the early needs of a startup. | | As long as the whales are here, it will make sense to have a | fishing boat. | phlipski wrote: | Reminds me of a quote I saw earlier this year in Bloomberg | about wall street companies moving to Florida: "The main | problem with moving to Florida is that you have to live in | Florida." | | https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-10/wall- | stre... ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-09-07 23:01 UTC)