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Comment by discolemonade | Hacker News Reader

It would be interesting to see stats on the composition of groups that YC has funded since inception; ie, percentage of all programmer groups vs programmer/biz guy vs all biz guys, etc. Any insights PG?

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I would say about half the groups have one or more non-programmers. I remember 2 that had no programmers, though I may be forgetting some.

The optimal configuration is one or two programmers plus one person who can sell really well. Best of all is when the person who can sell is also a programmer.

Just out of curiosity, how did those groups with non-programmers develop their product? Did they go out and find programmers? What did they spend most of their time doing?

One group found programmers, the other (in the current cycle) is doing something that doesn't require significant amounts of hacking, at least at this stage.

I would be especially interested in seeing percentage of single founder applicants (vs total applicants) and percentage of single founder companies accepted (vs total companies accepted).

I imagine it's not that high. If I were in PG's shoes, I would be more reluctant to fund single founder groups too for the simple reason that startup ideas go through countless iterations and it's very hard to mold an idea if you have no one to bounce ideas off of. Sure, you could get the opinions of family and friends, but they'll tell you anything because they don't have a stake in the idea.

My guess is that the percentage of single founder applicants is enormous, while the percentage of single founder accepted companies is minuscule. I just wonder how big the gap is.

@icey what makes you think it's enormous? I would think that most people who have a business idea they're confident enough to pursue have it because they've discussed it at length with someone else who's also interested in the idea.

Just a gut feeling. There's no real cost to applying, so why wouldn't a single founder apply?

Given the number of people that post about looking for a cofounder here, I'm just guessing that a lot of people don't have one, but feel that they've got a good enough idea to make a business. Some of them really will have what it takes; but I'm sure the proportion of single founders that apply is quite different that the proportion of single founders that are accepted.

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