I’ve written much over the years about the incredible success of Y Combinator startups, but as any experienced startup founder or investor knows, there is a dark side to technology innovation… lots of startups just don’t make it :( At Rebel Fund, our job is to invest in the top…

One of the most common complaints I hear amongst Y Combinator startup investors is their sky-high valuations. It’s not uncommon for YC startups to raise capital at 2-3 times the valuation of their non-YC peers at a similar stage, which begs the question “Are they really worth it?” Since at…

As a venture capital fund manager, one of the questions I’m asked most often by LPs is “How long will it take to get my money back?” At Rebel Fund, our job is to invest in the top 5–10% of new Y Combinator startups each year, and in doing so…

In August 2022, Y Combinator released its latest Top Companies list, now including 314 private and 16 public YC startups each valued at over $150M. YC officially reported ‘over 80’ of these startups to be valued at over $1B, but our best estimate is there are now 101 Y Combinator-backed…

A couple of years ago I published On Rebel Theorem to reveal the proprietary machine-learning algorithm we use at Rebel Fund to maximize our odds of success investing in tomorrow’s top Y Combinator startups. We’ve recently finished a complete overhaul of the algorithm and used it to influence our Y…

Last year I published an in-depth analysis of the Y Combinator Summer 2021 batch that was later shared by YC itself! I’ll repeat the tradition this year for the Summer 2022 (S22) batch, since we’re in an excellent position to do so at Rebel Fund after collecting over 100k data…

In my last post On Y Combinator batch quality at scale we looked at the dramatic increase in the number of YC startups over the years and how batch quality has held up. Anyone who has been to YC Demo Days in recent years has probably noticed as well how…

Since Rebel Fund invests exclusively in Y Combinator startups (with 80 YC startup investments to date) I’m often asked by other investors what I think about YC’s quickly growing batch sizes. Since I’ve been at every YC Demo Day since my own batch’s in Winter 2013, I’ve watched batch sizes…

In my previous post On $600B of Y Combinator Startup Success I discussed our analysis of the 271 companies on Y Combinator’s latest Top Companies list, which now total over $600B in value. A recurring theme in our studies of YC startups is just how ‘winners take all’ value creation…