What does the average YC company actually look like? I scraped 793 startups and 1,625 founder bios from the last 5 batches to find out. 27 interactive charts covering: which industries are surging, which are dying, what founders have in common, how partners pick companies, hidden themes in descriptions, and the exact statistical profile of a "default" YC startup. Some surprises: YC funds direct competitors in the same batch. And every partner has a type. Free. No login
Hey PH 👋
I kept hearing "YC only funds AI wrappers now" and wanted to check if it's actually true. So I scraped every company from the last 5 YC batches.
793 companies. 1,625 founder bios. Every tag, industry, and partner assignment.
Some findings that surprised me:
🔸 Only 15% are thin wrappers - and it's declining
🔸 Deep tech jumped to 29% of the latest batch
🔸 SF startups hire LESS than remote ones
🔸 YC funds near-identical competitors in the same batch - on purpose
🔸 Each partner has a distinct type (Diana Hu = infra, Garry Tan = contrarian bets)
Built with Python (scraping + NLP analysis) and Chart.js. Single HTML file, no backend.
This is a side project - not a product, not a startup. Just a weekend rabbit hole that got out of hand.
Would love feedback, what patterns do you find most interesting?
— Krishna
Amazingly helpful tool for me while making the first steps with CoreSight. Congrats on the launch and the product!
Thanks :) I've been wanting an analysis like this, but never got around to doing it.
And a sidenote, I'm not surprised education is at the bottom. Over the past five years, AI has been killing informal education platforms; Udemy, Coursera, Thinkific, etc., have all lost ~85% of their stock price. I've heard universities have been struggling as well.
This is seriously impressive work. I've been meaning to dig into YC trends like this for a while.
If there's any way I can contribute or help, I'd love to be involved. I'm especially interested in understanding underlying YC patterns more deeply.
Great analysis for YC portfolios! now question is here - how could my start up successfully break into YC? lol
It is interesting to note that almost 70% of the teams are only two-person.
Hey nice work, interesting insights! What is your definition of "wrapper"?
Cool, I will be sharing this with the team, they are trying raise money, some stats will be helpful for them. Thank you for sharing :)
