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p/the-y-combinator-databaseThe definitive database of YC companies with all the metrics
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Matt Schiller

The Y Combinator Database 2.0 - Everything you ever wanted to know about YC companies

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The most comprehensive and up-to-date public dataset on Y Combinator companies, with all batches from 2005 to 2018. Maintained by Snappr.

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Matt Schiller
Maker
Hi hunters! Matt from Snappr here. We launched YCDB 1.0 just over a year ago and were so happy with how much the PH community enjoyed it. So we kept working on it as a side project, rebuilding it from scratch with a totally new tech stack and the addition of many of the features that were suggested by the Product Hunt community last year. It is still the most comprehensive, up-to-date public dataset on YC companies, but we hope this new version is a much more useful tool! For those following at home, here's what's new: - The metrics we track on each company has gone from 6 to 14. - You can now create your own custom scoring to rank companies. - Cool new metrics charting tools. - Snappy new search with Algolia. - Visual comparison of YC batches by funding and fate. - Instant company table filtering and search. - See what a company's website looked like at the time of their YC demo day. - Companies from the most recent batch have been added. - Our stack is now Node+Express with Handlebars and a Postgres DB. - It is now hosted at ycdb.co instead of on snappr.co. - Plus much more that you'll have to discover for yourself :) Thanks to those hunters who suggested features and changes: @nathan_milham @rrhoover @kushagrpathak @fan_andy @guillaume_ @rafyasarmatta @paulsputer We want to keep making YCDB even better, so please keep the feature suggestions coming ๐Ÿ˜ƒ
Dylan Hulser
@mdschiller how about something with HQ location? Would love to see where these companies are based.
Matt Schiller
Maker
@dhulser you can see the HQ location for most companies (our best guess based on the available data) by going to individual company pages, e.g. https://www.ycdb.co/company/snappr (in the right panel under 'Details'). It would be cool to add aggregate pages in future (e.g. all companies from location X in a list). Another cool resource is YC World, which shows where founders came from as opposed to current HQ location: http://world.ycombinator.com/
Ryan Hoover
I see Product Hunt ranks #1 for most tweets. Perhaps not the greatest achievement, but I'll take it. ๐Ÿ˜† What's been the biggest surprise you've found from this data, @mdschiller?
Matt Schiller
Maker
@rrhoover Product Hunt also took out the #1 spot for fastest growing... https://www.ycdb.co/top-companie... ๐Ÿ† One of bigger surprises things was that the 'survival rate' (non-dead status) of YC companies after 5 years is really high, much higher than startups generally (check out the chart on the homepage). Also, although it shouldn't be so surprising, the charting tool really highlighted how just how dramatic the 'power law' is for YC companies - we had to apply log scales to the data to even be able to see most of the metrics ๐Ÿ˜† e.g. https://www.ycdb.co/comparison-c...
Erik Berlin
@mdschiller Thanks for creating this! Iโ€™m curious by what process you decided to prioritize this over Snappr product features. Itโ€™s a nice resource but I do have one request: Would it be possible to separate the true exits (IPOs and large acquisitions) from acquihires, where the product is shut down and never integrated? In my opinion, these nominal โ€œexitsโ€ actually belong in the โ€œdeadโ€ category (or a category of their own). Iโ€™d argue an exit should only count if the company is acquired for at least the amount they raised. This can be tricky to calculate if the acquirer is private and the acquisition is made with stock, but itโ€™s usually pretty obvious whether an acquisition was net positive for the acquired company. I think the percentage of true exits is quite small, but your chart makes it look much larger. According to https://www.ycombinator.com/topc..., there have only been 12 YC exits at $100 million or greater as of October 2018.
Matt Schiller
Maker
Thanks @sferik ๐Ÿ˜ƒ I like love the idea of segmenting the exits (could be quite sobering for us founders!) Because we already have funding data in YCDB, we could just apply the test of "is exit value greater than funding amount" to do a rough cut along the lines you suggested. As for time spent on YCDB, it is roughly proportional to the amount of awareness it generates for Snappr, and the bulk of it was me on my Sunday afternoons ๐Ÿ˜„
Wojciech Grzeล›kowiak
The "Take me to the random company" is a gr8 feature, but it is not working. It is always choosing the same two companies: lithit and vayable :-) When I switch to "incognito mode" its choose something else but stuck as before.
Matt Schiller
Maker
@_fones thanks for spotting this bug! (We introduced it at the last minute by putting YCDB behind a new CDN). It should be fixed now ๐Ÿ˜„
Francis Perron
Awesome tool! It wasn't posted on HN, my friend just did it :P https://news.ycombinator.com/ite...
Rodolfo Rosini
Hey @mdschiller this is awesome. And then I clicked on your company website hoping that you were selling a toolkit to build portfolio DBs for accelerators but alas you do something completely different ๐Ÿ˜ž What I am saying is that we'd pay for a build-your-own-YCDB, like, right now. So if you want to take it commercial or open source it so another maker can build a business around it we would be the first customer. I mean heck we would even provide seed funding for the company to start.
Paul Njoroge
@mdschiller what's your take on open-sourcing this? I'm building venturewise.africa and YCDB was an inspiration esp. on design. Currently just collecting data on airtable. @rodolfor still interested on a commercial toolkit for in-house portfolio DBs?
Rodolfo Rosini
@mdschiller @paulxnjoroge yeah I think there are enough accelerator/investors/superfangels in the world that there is an appetite for tools to manage and visualize clusters of early stage startups, either for one's own portfolio, and to find investment opportunities (and with the latter you can have a more scalable transactional business model)
Emme SINGER

Correction: Add the word LIKE to this sentence in the right sidebar: "See what [Slinkset's] website looked LIKE around the time of their S08 demo day."

Pros:

The TAKE ME TO A RANDOM COMPANY button. That kept me from researching the (same-old) basic handful of YC companies I'm aware of.

Cons:

Add lists from the opposite end: LEAST popular; LEAST funded; LEAST GROWTH; LEAST influential. Then we can draw some conclusions, takeaways.

Fฤฑrat Demirel
@mdschiller this is awesome! Thanks for the inspiration. Btw I covered Snappr last year on Webrazzi. Happy to meet you on PH. ;) https://webrazzi.com/etiket/snappr
Alex Tilly
Nice!
Igor Ozherelyev
Amazing site, great info ๐Ÿ‘ Thanks for doing it!
Matt Schiller
Maker
@oiv Thanks Igor ๐Ÿ˜ƒ
Lena Sargsyan
This Site is great! I like it
Elavenil
Good collections!
Davis Baer
Awesome work! Love it ๐Ÿ˜ƒ
Eben Akwuruoha
This is good work! Well done guys @mdschiller
Sahin Boydas
This is great, can you guys add exit/dead/current in the filter?
Brian Lee
@mdschiller Awesome job! I was going to call mine ycdb as well but you beat me to it by like a year. Anyways, I own yc-db.com and ycdb.app if you're interested. Otherwise, I'm just going to let them lapse Also if you want more data - let me know: YCensus
Daniel Kupka
why you guys not putting the db on the snappr site? you guys would get some nice seo juice...
Narek Vardanyan
Very interesting @mdschiller -great job!
Joshua Dance
Very cool, I don't see much overlap between Snappr and this site. Is this just going for link juice?
Sher Kandov

Overall, really useful resource. Peace :D

Pros:

Really pretty good to use as a resource for companies research

Cons:

It would awesome to also have some info about companies pitches (powering or smth else). And not be limited only by YC, 500Startups?