Ask HN: Have any Mexicans ever been accepted into Y Combinator? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Have any Mexicans ever been accepted into Y Combinator?

28 pointsjorgecastillo10 comments

I was talking with this schoolmate, somehow we started talking about Mexico City. I remembered about his trip one and a half years ago, so I asked about CETIN (Centro de Tecnología e Innovación Telmex). He told me about how awesome it was, that there we're all this programmers doing their own thing. So I asked him if he had ever heard of Y Combinator, I told him what first came to my mind. "It's an accelerator", "The best accelerator in the world", "Dropbox, Airbnb", "$6,000 USD years ago", "$100,000 USD now", "USA three months", "$500,000 USD Azure", "$100,000 USD Google Cloud", "10% Equity", "Very selective", "Demo day", etc. Well you get my point. On the way home while I was reflecting about our chat, I got really curious about my question, so I thought I'd ask!

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I believe in my friends year there was a man from Argentina ( = Latino != Mexican)

I personally lived in Monterrey, Mexico for two years. While most of my best friends are Mexican, I would hope that Y combinator would focus on the best ideas and the best teams and NOT where they are born or they would be in danger of loosing their "best status"as other programs would simple get the best possible people.

I think of Basketball where some countries, lets hypothetically pick Switzerland, pick the tallest/best 5 players that are Swiss. Other countries like the US, by comparison, pick the tallest/best 5 players from anywhere they can find them. The USA doesn't have the CONSTRAINT of having to pick just Americans.

I say pick the best from anywhere.

Is your question about ethnic diversity or the practicality of applying from another country? I think your question sounds a bit loaded and could stand some clarification.

I think you're reading too much into the question. It's not really ambiguous -- he is asking if any citizens of Mexico been accepted to Y-combinator. It's a yes or no question that could be answered more fully with a single number. If you wanted to answer it more broadly you could consider immigrants from Mexico too.

Agreed; I read it as asking if there's any local community of YC-funded startups he might be able to connect with.

>I think you're reading too much into the question. It's not really ambiguous -- he is asking if any citizens of Mexico been accepted to Y-combinator.

Yep, just this!

Analyzis is getting in the way of communication. Do you have the answer to his question? Myself, I'm dying to know the answer.

There is not an answer for the country of origin but of the demographic (race and gender). I wrote about it here: https://medium.com/@JDcarlu/what-is-wrong-with-sv-networks-a... PS:I'm latino

While we're on the subject: what's the geographical distribution of YC-accepted founders?

I read an article recently that in the past they did not measure founder metrics like this besides gender but were considering doing so going forward.

Dunno for YCombinator, but 500startups (USA-Mountain View) has had already 4-6 startups founded by Mexicans (and a Mexican-cum-american, wait, that's me) You don't need to come to Silicon Valley for an accelerator, 500startups Mexico City is right there!

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