Out of the 49 companies in the S11 batch, 10 exited, 17 are "dead", and 22 have no status.
Most of the companies from the W16 batch have no status listed.
[0]: https://yclist.com/
In our case, YC was super valuable. We've never been more focused than when going through the program. They make available so many resources you're desperate to grow and try things so you can get as much as possible out of the program.
Even though it has been a while since we were in the bay area for the program, we are still seeing many benefits by the huge and growing network of YC companies.
I can't speak for our co-founders but if we could go back in time, we would absolutely take part in the program again.
Isn't early employee equity compensation more a case of "if the founders make a lot of money from this, I deserve a fraction of that too" rather than being an IOU in place of compensation?
Sustainable businesses can buy the labor they need with present cash flows and don’t need to sell people on the possibility of future ones.
- most people who were around early enough for their grant to begin expiring by now moved on, so the standard termination clause already kicked in.
- some of those who have left did exercise, and understood the risk they took by doing so.
- those who are still here and are approaching that expiration have plenty of leverage to renegotiate.
not all companies in YC are unicorns, and they don't have to be. we are positioned very well, despite taking some time to get there.
For S11, 21 companies are still active, with 5 (GoCardless, Segment, Zeus, Vidyard, and Sift) in the "YC Top 100" (valued at $150mm or more). At least one (Segment) is valued at $1bn+.
PagerDuty isn't listed as exited, despite IPO-ing last year.
Edit: And Flexport isn't listed at all (Should be W14, IIRC)