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Y Combinator is a seed-stage startupfunding 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—about $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". 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.
Portfolio
Companies that have received funding from Y Combinator include:
Mountain View, CA
