The new YC batch is from 23 countries | Hacker News Reader

The new YC batch is from 23 countries

twitter.com

34 pointstalhof849 comments

Since people have been asking about this on Twitter too: I can't name individual founders or companies. Since there is some news value in the fact that a startup is funded by YC, we leave it to the companies to disclose when it's most useful to them, e.g. when they launch, or launch something new.

Is this the countries of which people are citizens (including citizenship inherited from immigrant parents), countries in which people were born (including those who immigrated as children), or countries in which founders are currently resident?

The latter would be most impressive (and the most natural interpretation of "from" in my mind), but I'm guessing it's one of the first two.

Citizenships. https://twitter.com/paulg/status/411936288904728576

Question: on what visa do most non US citizens attend YC?

My understating is that a B1/2 would not be compatible with the nature of the work, E1's take around 6 months and require around $100,000 per founder and H1B's are like gold dust (and they also take months and still not sure it would workable)

I have a vested interest in the answer to this, thanks.

I am curious about this too. Though B1/2 may seem appropriate for YC, I am not sure how they get around the fact that you are not supposed to "work" for any employer.

I agree however my suspicion is that it has still been used.

From my very limited interaction with the YC network, it is quite common to use B1/2 visas. Also in some cases YC founders will get O-1 (genius) visas, though I've only seen those happen during or after YC (my guess is that after investment you can then get your big-brand-name investors to vouch for your "genius" as a formality).

Right or wrong, as an entrepreneur you should be scrappy and you will need to bend the rules.

I wonder how many are merely 'consulting' or not even that, just on a 3 month tourist?

Map:

https://chart.googleapis.com/chart?cht=map:fixed=-60,180,80,...

inverse

Woah! Very interesting variety. I was expecting all Germany, UK, Ireland, etc. but this is much more interesting than that.

On a separate note: I want to say kudos to pg & the team for doing this. pg found himself in hot waters when he made the remark about not preferring founders with strong English accents. Actions speak louder than words, so I have to really hand it to them for doing this, this is the best possible thing they could have done in response to the harsh reaction they received.

"UK" doesn't seem to be shown on the map. I think "UK" should be replaced by "GB" in the URL.

Fixed, with just moments to spare.

Surprised that there is no Latin American country represented.

Sorry, I should have used za instead of sa. Also the fi was a mistake.

We were scheduled for the last day of interviews and were asked to show up early, so I decided to attend all six days of interviews this batch. I was truly impressed how diverse the startups were.

It's striking to me that there were startup founders from towns and cities around the world where they didn't know any other startups or advisors that could help them. I'm glad that communities like HN exist online to provide a community for everyone.

Correction: 22. The founder I thought was from Finland is actually from Slovenia.

In the past you've said that investors need to be able to see startup founders face to face (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6850199), so how will arrangements work out with this batch? Are the founders going to be traveling back and forth to see you guys? Are you going to encourage them to try to relocate here? (but obviously that'll be difficult, you're one of the voices in the FWD.us initiative so you know that, will you encourage them to try to relocate in spite of that?).

We ask all the startups we fund to come to SV Jan through March. Whether they stay afterward depends on whether they want to, and whether the government lets them. Some are making things for their local market (e.g. Glio, in the last batch), and for those it makes sense to go back to their home countries afterward even if they can get US visas.

Also, can you please say 22 out of how many? (that is, what is the total number of accepted startups?)

Additionally: 22 seems like a big number. Almost as if this time around the YC partners sat together and said "hey, let's try to get a lot of overseas startups this time around and see what happens".

I notice that there have been "themes" in different seasons of YC... for example, in one of the previous seasons, you said that when reviewing applications you'd give high preference to startups doing things with electronics, robots, etc. - so, indeed this really seems like a sort of an experiment as if you're curious to see and learn how startups from abroad do things. Two questions in line of this: 1) What are you hoping to learn from this class? 2) What are you expecting to see (any hypotheses?)?

It's on the order of 100 founders, I'm pretty sure (within 50%). 50-60 companies. The chances it would vary greatly from previous batches absent any other announcement are pretty low.

Around 75, including the nonprofits. We're never sure of the exact number at this stage, because some we accept at interviews explode on the starting line, and we sometimes accept late applications.

It wasn't any kind of deliberate choice by us. I was surprised how many seemed to be from other countries this batch. I would guess it's because we're getting more applications from overseas.

Ahh, so these startups are not totally accepted, they're just the ones to get through the first part of the process. Sorry I misunderstood. Thanks for answering.

They're totally accepted.

Another correction: I should have said za instead of sa.

I see SS. Is that South Sudan? That will be terrific. Is this the first time YC is going so international? Was it deliberate? Why?

Congratulations to all those in this batch. Best of luck.

Yes, Sudan. No, we've funded lots of startups from overseas in the past. I remember one batch a few years ago that was 20% international.

Sudan (SD) and South Sudan (SS) are distinct entities now. If you funded someone from SS, I'll be super interested in meeting them/figuring out which project it is (presumably one of the non-profits). Regular Sudan is a lot more normal.

Oops, all I know is that this founder is from Sudan.

Do they have strong foreign accents?

For the most part not so strong that it's hard to understand what they're saying, which is the critical threshold. There are a few I'm worried about though.

I see no Russia, have there been a lot of Russian founders before? I don't think so, i have more or less followed YC and haven't heard of one. Why is that? Lack of interest from Russians or some specific flaw common to them which leads to their rejection?

Ev Kontsevoy (Mailgun) is from Russia

and that's it?

well, i may understand that it's not about discrimination. culture in the Russian IT field is quite hostile to startups, the whole idea isn't much respected, so my bet is that there was simply too little interest from Russian applicants, not a low pass rate.

There have been others. The founders of RethinkDB and Accunote are Russian.

Acunote founders are Ukrainian, not Russian.

and aerofs i believe.

I love the diversity, and I think it's perhaps a true sign that we're moving away from the zukerberg-model startup.

whats the Zuckerberg model startup?

An excuse.

white, middle-class american college dropout

I've always wondered how they all find affordable-ish places to live down there. Does YC help with that?

YC's investment + the startfund money is enough to pay for a place to live, even if it's an expensive short-term lease. (Companies find places to live on their own. When you're going to be in a particular apartment/home for 3-12 months you don't need to overoptimize for the last few hundred dollars in rent; it's better to find a place you like and get to work.)

au -- Australia

bg -- Bulgaria

ca -- Canada

hr -- Croatia

dk -- Denmark

eg -- Egypt

fi -- Finland

fr -- France

in -- India

il -- Israel

kr -- South Korea

nz -- New Zealand

om -- Oman

pt -- Portugal

ro -- Romania

sg -- Singapore

si -- Slovenia

sa -- Saudi Arabia

ss -- South Sudan

ch -- Switzerland

tr -- Turkey

uk -- United Kingdom

us -- United States

Have there ever been latinamerican startups on YC?

http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/06/glio/

wow this is awesome. and would it be the first African entrepreneurs ib YC?

which one from .hr? :)

I would also like to know :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com