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
There’s a lot of narrative about what YC is doing, but very little actual data behind it. The near-identical competitors in the same batch finding is especially interesting. Curious if you noticed any patterns in founder backgrounds across deep tech vs. so-called wrappers? Love data-driven myth-busting like this. :)
Nice analysis! Is there any way I can play around with the data you've already scrapped? Would love to know more about the founders' backgrounds.
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 :)
