Of the 600+ companies Y Combinator has invested in within the last 12 months, which ones have the strongest founders/founding teams? We identified 15 of the top teams using our Management Mosaic algorithm.
From Airbnb to Stripe to Coinbase, some of the most recognizable names in tech have one thing in common from their early days as startups: seed funding from Y Combinator.
YC pioneered a focus on backing founders it sees as high-potential, even if their ideas don’t appear to be so. As YC co-founder Paul Graham writes,
“In fact, when we funded Airbnb, we thought it was too crazy. We couldn’t believe large numbers of people would want to stay in other people’s places. We funded them because we liked the founders so much. As soon as we heard they’d been supporting themselves by selling Obama and McCain branded breakfast cereal, they were in. And it turned out the idea was on the right side of crazy after all.”
Management Mosaic is an algorithm built by CB Insights data scientists that reduces the subjectivity inherent in assessing founding and management team quality and enables enterprises and investors to quickly identify the best startups.
With the CB Insights Management Mosaic algorithm, we analyzed the 600+ companies YC has funded in the past year (see them all here) — and identified 15 of the strongest founders/founding teams below.
