Since its inception in 2005, Y Combinator has shepherded hundreds of tech startups through its accelerator program. Recently, they shared some stats about the portfolio where they revealed that the total market cap of all YC companies is > $30 billion. Not too shabby.
Of course, the $30 billion number they cite follows a power law meaning a handful of companies make up a majority of that value. Priceonomics‘ Rohin Dhar penned an insightful analysis on why Sequoia Capital looks to be the biggest winner from YC’s success, and we wanted to dig in a bit more. So we visualized the financing history of YC’s most lucrative potential winners (translation: not exited) to see who, in addition to Sequoia, is riding the YC gravy train to riches?
The chart below highlights the funding history of five of Y Combinator’s biggest potential hits – Dropbox, AirBnB, Stripe, Zenefits and Machine Zone, the ‘Game of War’ publisher that is reportedly raising at a valuation of $3 billion. Dropbox and AirBnB command over $20B in aggregate value in the private markets and Stripe and Zenefits last raised funding at $1.75B and $500M valuations, respectively. Again, this highlights the power law nature of these companies – the two top dogs are leagues ahead of the others.
And when looking at the VC investor makeup of these companies seed and Series A rounds, we see Sequoia Capital has invested in the seed round of all three of the companies in the billion-dollar club, AirBnB, Dropbox and Stripe. Even better? Sequoia is an LP in Y Combinator as well. Note: Dropbox’s $500M debt financing was not included in its total funding figures and Machine Zone’s funding and valuation is only rumored at this point.
To further highlight Sequoia’s dominance in YC’s potential grand slams, only one other VC investor, Andreessen Horowitz, has invested in two of the five firms at the early-stage, Stripe and Zenefits, respectively. 10 other VC firms have invested in one of the five companies.
For more recent analyses on Sequoia Capital, see:
- Sequoia Capital – Their 10 Largest U.S. M&A and IPO Exits in the Last 5 Years
- Sequoia Capital teardown
- Breaking down the investment syndicate patterns of Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz
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