Questions:
Dave McClure at #3, Paul Graham at #943; whereas 500 Startups is at #41, and Y Combinator is at #15?
Why is 500 Startups classified as a financial firm, whereas Y Combinator is classified as a company?
Also, I'm surprised that Andreessen Horowitz is ranked #67 of financial firms (given that Marc Andreessen is ranked #14), and Elon Musk is #119 for people. I would have thought they'd both be ranked much higher.
In the data source, TechCrunch's Crunchbase, the influence of Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston, et al. is captured in YC the company, and Marc Andreessen is split between his personal identity and AH. So you get a lot of odd things like that.
As for why YC got classified a company, who knows? It's accident of history. They should change it.
TechCrunch as a single data source. Are there any other sources used?
Sooner the better, TechCrunch data is iffy ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/2913315731/ though useful for a start point. Did you do a select on the companies to check for multiple listings?
http://www.crunchbase.com/company/y-combinator
:-)