There are not just startups that become unicorns and startups that fold.

Investors' worst nightmare is if you just make enough money to keep going, but you don't grow ("lifestyle business" as they use it is a derogatory term).

That's because they prefer a sudden death where they can write down the investment and deduct their loss from taxes than an investment where they never see any money again.

And then there are "acquisitions" that are really "acui-hires" dressed up as acquisitions to get the people (more common) or to buy an asset in a limited shell package (less common) after things did/may have (but people were to tempted to take the offer) or did not pan/panned out. Some people consider anything <$50m as a "failure", because that's roughly the sum that many corporations can spend without calling the bigshots for a board meeting to decide.

I personally know the founders of three YC startups that are functionally dead (raised capital, not developing anything, basically laid off everyone but the founder(s)) but are not on this list. I'd bet it's at least twice that number.

I love seeing the 'YC Graveyard' project. It’s a great reminder of the incredible ideas and effort behind each startup, even if things didn’t pan out. We’ve been working on giving some of these inactive startups a second chance by acquiring them and exploring ways to repurpose or revive their tech.

If anyone’s been involved with an inactive YC project and wants to chat about what’s possible, I’d love to connect.

And all inventory of the defunct startups goes here: https://svdisposition.com/auctions

It was interesting to dig through and consider if it was the idea, the timing or the execution that lead to the failure.

I'm onehundertpercent pissed off with YC:

* The modal win for a founder is $0.00

* PG makes big talk about winner's average returns... Yayyyyy..... However YC gets preferential shares; YC is not aligned with the common shareholders (founders; builders). YC builds a story that they support creators however YC doesn't sit on the same table-side as creators.

* I actually believe YC is worthwhile, but I wonder if Ize just been brainwashed?

(reëdited for clarity)

Since you probably already have this information, it would be interesting to have the "death date", with a link to the announcement or however you gathered the information.

Damn my dead YC startup didn’t even make it into the graveyard

“Better to have launched and lost than never to have launched at all”

Spoken like someone that uses other people‘s money. I think the statement would be different if it was their own money being lost for the startup or interest rates weren’t 0%.

I've also been tracking the 'path to graveyard' for the startups from the last 3 years here https://pivots.fyi/

There was a similar project a few months ago that tracked changes/pivots/shutdowns in startups. It was a very light site, unfortunately I lost the bookmark or forgot to bookmark it. Can anyone help me here?

Where does the money go ? Especially for startups dead 6 months after investing

If you didn’t become a unicorn, but have a steady income, is it possible to buy out equity?

Scrolling through this quickly, I notice that I have not heard of a single one of these companies.

I’m not sure I can assign any meaning to that. Just my immediate observation.

how many YC startups are there?

wiki says 4K, so 821/4K = 20%. not too bad. I expected much worse.

Would it be possible add an "expand all" option? I am searching through them with ctrl+f, to figure out which of them are similar to other ideas that are being considered today :D

My company is on the list (S20). Several founders from my batch did really amazing stuff (Supabase, ZIP), others got acqu-hired. It's pretty interesting how the paths have developed over the years.

I am still very bullish on YC. If you have a startup and have an opportunity with an interview / ability to attend the batch, you should definitely do it.

Is YC better than other incubators, percentage wise?

Google spreadsheet version of this, may be somebody needs. Also, it has more data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iIu8JATRDfJ91PS_rscS...

Perhaps my math is off, but I thought there would’ve been more?

YC has often talked about how the average YC startup ‘dies’ and yet I’m sure they’ve funded at least double the number of startups on this list. Is ‘dying’ also synonymous with ended up becoming a ‘lifestyle business’? Clarity would be appreciated on this!

So, question, how many YC startups have been successful? (broad strokes, let's say above 2x or break-even).

While this is interesting it would be more trustworthy if, when you clicked a name, it showed you evidence for why the site thinks they are inactive. A founder quote, a date, a news story, something. Right now, aside from the title, it's no different from a list of active YC companies.

If anyone’s interested, here’s a relevant video that goes a little deeper into the details of some failed YC startups: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rSY2sUPTDDc

Wth. Blume benefits sounds like a really useful thing ? Wonder what happened.

What does it mean to be inactive? I see Pigeonly (W15) on the list, but they are still active as far as their website is concerned.

I'd be more interested to see the stats over time. I get the sense that YC used to be a lot more selective in a time gone by

The list is missing stock trading platform Cera. These clowns were absolute scammers with a buggy app and zero customer support.

this is not actually an accurate list

> Better to have launched and lost than never to have launched at all

...yet when Google does this, people are up in arms and insist they should run their products forever, even if they have no product market fit.

821 out of how many in total?

Any companies in here where AI would have potentially changed the outcome?

What’s the method used here? “Finary” website still looks pretty good

Something is blocking the UI (loading the images?) but cool site!

if this app would have provided links to the startup it would be so much better even if they were defunct one could easily search more about them.

Filestack YCS12 is a mistake, it's very active.

Looks like the site is down. : (

And yet they’ve rejected my startup ideas several times. (:

Now do a podcast series interviewing founders on what went wrong

Only 821?