[HN Gopher] The YC Summer 2022 Batch
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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...
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