Related/meta question: despite the increase in YC cohort sizes, has anyone else noticed a sharp drop in the number of Launch HNs / YC Startup Launch Announcements on HN?
EDIT: Checked the data and yep, there's a drop: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EBcI3Jm2I9Kj_JMGyRnN...
BigQuery:
#standardSQL
SELECT TIMESTAMP_TRUNC(timestamp, MONTH) as month_posted,
COUNT(*) as num_posts_gte_5
FROM `bigquery-public-data.hacker_news.full`
WHERE REGEXP_CONTAINS(title, 'YC [S|W][0-9]{2}')
AND score >= 5
AND timestamp >= '2015-01-01'
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY 1
I think that's because there are a lot more bio/hard science startups now, and fewer pure software plays. Pure software plays are great for a Launch HN, but the bio and hard science ones probably don't see the benefit, and also have longer cycles to launch.
Truth.
I’m doing a life science startup and our medical validation will likely take 18 months.
For what it's worth, in my experience 18 months is ambitious.
What's more, it's also probably because companies at YC are generally later stage now.
It's not unusual now to see companies well past launch or even product market fit prior to YC.
Exactly.
It was even talked about a lot from YC about how they are seeing more and more people who reapply year after year and how that is seen as a "positive signal".
And I saw this first hand from our StartupSchool batch. The only people who made it through were ones who had already had significant numbers of customers.
That's actually untrue - almost half of the Startup School companies that we ended up funding for the W2019 batch were unlaunched.
I never said that all Startup School companies had customers.
My point was that it seems like the needle has shifted towards companies who do have some level of product market fit. Has the percentage of companies who were unlaunched changed over time ?
While it's true that we have some companies in the batch that are well past launch, in S18 only 44% of the companies we funded had revenue and roughly 40% were not launched prior to YC.
I also added a tab tabulating YC Job posts on HN; surprisingly they're downtrending too, although not as seasonal as the YC Launches (which makes sense).
I appreciate that you took the time to do the math.