by Darren Herman (4/4/2007)
Paul Graham of Y Combinator success has released an insightful essay about traits he’s studied with the early stage entrepreneurs he deals with each day that are part of his program up in Boston.
The essay didn’t just strike me about founders, but it struck me about Y Combinators success rate as well:
We’ve now been doing Y Combinator long enough to have some data about success rates. Our first batch, in the summer of 2005, had eight startups in it. Of those eight, it now looks as if at least four succeeded. Three have been acquired: Reddit was a merger of two, Reddit and Infogami, and a third was acquired that we can’t talk about yet. Another from that batch was Loopt, which is doing so well they could probably be acquired in about ten minutes if they wanted to.
That’s pretty darn solid if you ask me. I do not know anyone personally who has been through the Y Combinator, but based on the essay that Paul has written and the statistics, the numbers certainly look positive.
In the essay that Paul has written, he talks about many reasons why people do not become entrepreneurial and talks about why those reasons should be ignored. The topics covered are:
- Too young
- Too inexperienced
- Not determined enough
- Not smart enough
- Know nothing about business
- No Cofounder
- No idea
- No room for more startups
- Family to support
- Independently wealthy
- Not ready for committment
- Need for structure
- Fear of uncertainty
- Don’t realize what you’re avoiding
- Parents want you to become a doctor
- A job is the default
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