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.
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 round of some of 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. Clouckick 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, Justin.TV, Xobni, Scribd, Hipmunk, Disqus, among others.
In 2011, Graham wrote that the incubator has had 25 companies acquired, 5 of them for over $10 million, but the total value of the remaining companies at that time was higher 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 start-up 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 or have been sold for more than $40 million, tell us in the comments.
