Comment by WisNorCan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by WisNorCan | Hacker News Reader

David Cohen wrote a check as part of the angel round for Uber [1]. The "$80 Billion in value created" seems to include companies which may not have directly been part of the Techstars Accelerator program like Uber [2]. I am not sure if all the others were part of Techstars.

"Join our network of amazing mentors and portfolio companies such as Sphero, Digital Ocean, Localytics, SendGrid, Occipital, Next Big Sound, ClassPass, Simply Measured, FullContact, Realty Mogul, GrabCAD, Placester, Scopely, DataRobot, Remitly, LeanPlum, Synack, Tap Influence, Bluecore, Outreach, Cloudability, Distil Networks, Pilot, Yesware, Bellhops, Twilio, Spothero, Bench, Uber, GoSpotCheck, Ginger.io, Threat Stack, Timehop, PillPack, Plated and GameTime."

Having said that, I love the transparency that Techstars provides on each batch of investments and status (acquired / failed / active) etc. I wish every investor provided this level of transparency on failure rates.

[1] http://davidgcohen.com/2014/07/14/the-ponys-lucky-horseshoe/

[2] http://www.techstars.com/companies/

It is indeed misleading to say that $80b in value was created, because Uber and Twilio were not Techstars companies.

"The market cap on Techstars website is $7.5B, whereas YC’s portfolio was valued at $30B in 2014" [1]

A more interesting days point (that ignores outliers) is the number of startups that raised a Series A round; and using that metric, you can rightfully claim Techstars to be #1 [2]

[1] https://blog.routific.com/which-startup-accelerator-is-right...

[2] https://mattermark.com/500-startups-accelerator-company/

Does it make sense to ignore outliers here? The VC model makes most of it returns on the top few performers.

It's not a question of ignoring outliers; the point he's making is that these investments were never a part of the Techstars portfolio to begin with but were independent investments by people affiliated with Techstars.

using the same logic if you count investments of YC partners that were not part of YC the final number will probably be much higher than $80B.

Normally we edit a title when people complain that it's misleading, but if I do that in this case, people will accuse us of censoring because of YC. Since the HN principle is to moderate less when YC's interests are involved (albeit indirectly in this case) I've simply put the title in quotes instead. That's an option we sometimes use when commenters are complaining about a title but we don't have a better one handy.

It's funny that your second metric appears to be one that many might disagree with. I think PG once said something along the lines of - if every company accepted into YC is raising we aren't taking enough chances on longshots.

Basically, they want more Airbnb longshots along with what look like safer bets, and often those longshots have a hard time raising cause it seems so far fetched.

Twilio as well, two great investments but not accelerator companies.

That transparency though... dammmmmn. Super cool.

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