This is interesting, but I think it speaks more to which "beachheads" companies are choosing rather than which markets they ultimately target. For example, with consumer vs. enterprise I suspect that when Dropbox did Demo Day they would have been labelled a "consumer" company although the enterprise potential was obviously there. Vertical SaaS is another example--choosing a vertical is an excellent way to start, and it can be enormously lucrative for a small team, but I imagine that "VC-style" exits will usually require branching past it.
Great point. It also indicates to investors what startups think is a good starting off point. It makes sense to go after a vertical rather than horizontal since that is more consistent with PG's well strategy (go deep and narrow rather than wide and shallow). Generalizing quite a bit but they are more able to get traction, get subscriptions, and increase LTV early on. The sustainable business model is more mature and a better signal to investors rather than selling only the vision that might happen with more horizontal plays.
Nice analysis, but it's hard to draw conclusions from only two data points. Seems like you have the data for up to 12 demo days and it would be really cool to have someone make some graphs (though maybe this was already done and they were intentionally withheld ;) ).
I agree. A change from 47% to 56% isn't really a dramatic shift, and could represent only 1 or 2 companies difference with such a small sample size. Hard to draw any conclusions at all.
For those wanting to dig further, here's a list of all companies (active/exited/dead): http://yclist.com/
3700+ companies, >$4Billion in funding, and an investor graph of thousands of investors
Nice site. There appears to be a bug with the "Cohort Date" column sort for firefox 28 on windows 7. It works in chrome but not firefox.
Wow, http://www.fathomdb.com is a YC08 company...and still has just a landing page up. How does that not count as dead?
Good list, but it hasn't been updated in a year.
What's the end game for a YC non-profit? Besides corporate social responsibility, how does a non-profit founded at YC benefit the business ecosystem at large?