Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham just tweeted an interesting data point about the valuations of YC startups. As of now, Graham says that 37 Y Combinator companies, out of 511 startups, have valuations of or sold for at least $40 million. Currently the total valuation for the 511 startups is $11.5 billion, as Graham writes on Hacker News.
My first thought when reading Graham’s tweet was which companies are included in this group. Graham says that Rap Genius is on the list. And there are a number of obvious ones because of acquisition numbers and valuations from past funding rounds of some YC alums. Facebook just bought Parse for $85 million. In its last round, Dropbox was reportedly valued at $4 billion. Heroku was bought by Salesforce for over $200 million.
Airbnb is reportedly valued at $2.5 billion. Loopt was acquired for $43 million. Zynga bought OMGPOP for over $180 million. Cloudkick was reportedly sold for $50 million, and SocialCam sold to AutoDesk for $60 million.
Other startups that could be in the $40 million-plus valuation club include Stripe, Weebly, Optimizely, Justin.TV, Xobni, Scribd, Hipmunk and Disqus among others.
In 2011, Graham wrote that the incubator has had 25 companies acquired, five of them for over $10 million, but the total value of the remaining companies at that time was higher than the total value of the five acquisitions at the time. As of last year, YC had launched 380 companies, which had raised just over $1 billion in total, with each company averaging about $2.7 million. The amount raised has since been updated to just under $1.5 billion. And The New York Times recently reported that the average value of a Y Combinator startup is $22.4 million.
Today’s data point is interesting food for thought. Beyond just valuations, it’s likely that Y Combinator may see an IPO or two in the coming years from alums. If you think (or know) of any other Y Combinator companies that are valued at or have been sold for more than $40 million, tell us in the comments.
Leena Rao is currently a Senior Writer at Fortune Magazine.
Leena had a brief stint at Google Ventures as an Operating Partner.
Leena’s first role out of journalism school was at TechCrunch which she joined in 2008. She rose through the ranks becoming the Managing Editor for TechCrunch and a voice at TechCrunch Disrupt.
She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City.
She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was the captain of the women’s varsity tennis team. She has also contributed technology content for Oprah.com.