Y Combinator
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- This is an article about the venture capital firm; for the fixed point combinator, see Y combinator.
Y Combinator is a seed-stage startup funding firm, started in 2005 by Paul Graham, Robert Morris, Trevor Blackwell, and Jessica Livingston. Y Combinator provides seed money, advice, and connections at two 3-month programs a year in Cambridge and Mountain View. In exchange, they take on average about 6% of the company's equity. Unusually among startup funding firms, Y Combinator provides very little money- usually $5000 + $5000 per founder. This reflects Graham's conviction that between free software, dynamic languages, the web, and Moore's Law, the cost of starting a startup has greatly decreased.
As of January 2008, Y Combinator had funded 80 startups, the best known of which are reddit, Loopt, and Justin.tv. The number of startups funded in each cycle has been gradually increasing. The first cycle in summer 2005 had eight startups. In the summer 2007 cycle, there were 19.
Y Combinator was started after Graham gave a talk at his alma mater, Harvard (where he earned a PhD in Computer Science), which became, "How to Start a Startup".[1] He suggested founders seek seed funding from "angel investors", preferably those who had made money in technology. He half-jokingly added "but not me", but, feeling guilty, he soon after organized Y Combinator to offer seed funding to startups.
[edit] Portfolio
Companies that have received funding from Y Combinator include:
| Name | Date | Business | Website | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Biographicon | Summer 07 | Universal wiki biography site. | biographicon.com | |
| Anywhere.FM | Summer 07 | Web Music Network | Anywhere.fm | Acquired by imeem in January 2008 |
| Appjet | Summer 07 | Easy hosted web apps | appjet.com | Public beta as of Dec 2007 |
| Parakey | Winter 07 | Desktop application platform | parakey.com | Purchased by Facebook in July 2007. |
| Virtualmin | Winter 07 | Virtual server management | virtualmin.com | |
| Weebly | Winter 07 | Point-and-click website creation | weebly.com | |
| Xobni | Summer 06 | Email analytics | xobni.com | Raised $4.2M Series A from Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, and others in March 2007 |
| Justin.tv | n/a | Live video and chat | justin.tv | Raised $2M Series A from Alsop Louie in July 2007 |
| i'minlikewithyou | Winter 06 | Social network service | i'minlikewithyou.com | |
| YouOS | Winter 06 | Online operating system | YouOS.com | Defunct |
| Loopt | Summer 05 | Personal geolocation | loopt.com | Raised $12M Series B in July 2007 |
| Summer 05 | Social news | reddit.com | Purchased by Condé Nast | |
| Scribd | 2006 | Document Sharing | scribd.com | Received over $3.7 million from Redpoint Ventures and The Kinsey Hills Group |
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