On YC unicorn founders

I’ve published dozens of data-driven blog posts over the years about Y Combinator startups and founders from an investor perspective, but I’m yet to talk about the people that made YC’s incredible success possible in the first place — its unicorn founders.

As I explained in On the power law of Y Combinator startups, the unicorns ($1B+ companies) drive the overwhelming majority of YC’s early-stage investor returns. Since at Rebel Fund, we believe that a company’s founders are the ultimate drivers of its value creation, it only seems fair to take a deep dive into what YC unicorn founders “look like.”

Well, according to DALL-E based on some of our summary statistics, a typical YC unicorn founder looks like this:

Rather than stop the post here though, I’ll share a few highlights from the thousands of data points Rebel has collected and analyzed on the founders of the ~100 unicorns that YC has helped launch thus far.

Experience

YC unicorn founders had an average of 8 years work experience when they started their YC startup. Assuming they got their first job after graduating college at around 22 years of age, that means they were around 30 years old on average.

However, as you’ll see in the chart below, there is a wide range of years experience when they founded their YC startups. Plenty of them had more or less than this average, and a surprising number were only a few years into their career — though relatively few had over 15 years experience.

I’m often asked how many top YC founders are first-time vs repeat founders, and of course this is also something we track at Rebel. The chart below shows how many times each unicorn founder was a startup co-founder before their YC startup:

As you’ll see, a slight majority of them were first-time founders, though a signficant number had co-founded one or more startups in the past. I believe this tells us that co-founder experience is helpful but not necessary to build a successful venture-backed startup.

Only a small minority of venture-backed startups achieve successful exits (acquistion or IPO) so perhaps it’s unsurprising that a smaller proportion of YC unicorn founders had lead a startup all the way to an acquisition prior to starting their YC company — about 20% of them.

Education

So now you may be wondering, where did these unicorn founders go to school? Well, most likely Stanford or MIT :-)

The chart below shows the number of YC unicorn founders with degrees at universities ranked by Rebel’s internal top school algorithm. Since YC has always had a bias towards technical founders, top technical universities are represented most often:

While a couple of elite engineering universities are seen most often on unicorn founders’ resumes, there is a long tail of other universities represented, so going to a top engineering school also falls into the “helpful but not necessary” category for unicorn founders.

What did they study? As you may have guessed, probably something technical.

The chart below shows the degree types most often seen on YC unicorn founders’ diplomas. Of course Bachelor of Science (BS) is most common, but there are also a lot of BAs and few MBAs, and plenty of post-graduate degrees in technical fields.

Demographics

As I discussed in my post On Rebel Theorem 3.0, our proprietary ML/AI algorithm for predicting YC startup success, we’ve observed that founder demographics (age, gender, ethnicity, etc) is not a reliable predictor of YC startup outcomes. That said, it’s worth noting a few demographic characteristics of YC unicorn founders.

The first is that they’re overwhelmingly male, at least as inferred by GPT-4 based on their first and last name:

The second is that they’re quite commonly immigrants to the US. We also use GPT-4 to infer a founder’s most likely country of origen based on their educational and work experience, and we’ve found that while nearly 60% of YC unicorn founders are originally American, a significant minority are from outside the US:

As I discussed in my post On 101 Y Combinator unicorns, almost all YC unicorn companies are in the US (with about 2/3 of those in the SF Bay Area alone) but that does not mean that the founders originated there.

Personality

Also as discussed in my post On Rebel Theorem 3.0, we can now use AI to accurately infer a founder’s personality profile based on certain aspects of their online footprint. Our findings on YC founder personality profiles probably warrant their own blog post at some point, but for now let’s just look at how the DISC profile of YC unicorn founders compare to the general population:

The “average” YC unicorn founder has the following DISC profile:

Dominance (D): 36%
Influence (I): 15%
Steadiness (S): 11%
Conscientiousness (C): 37%

The high Dominance means they’re results-oriented, confident, and decisive. They prefer to take control of situations, focus on achieving goals, and tend to be direct in their communication. They value efficiency and can sometimes be perceived as assertive or even aggressive in pursuit of objectives.

The high Conscientiousness means they place importance on accuracy, quality, and detailed work. They have a strong sense of responsibility and a preference for working within established structures or guidelines. They’re be methodical in their approach and prioritize correctness in their work.

The low Influence means they’re reserved when it comes to social interactions or influencing others. They prefer working independently or in smaller groups, and may not actively seek to be the center of attention. They rely more on facts and logic than on charm or persuasion.

The low Steadiness means they thrive in environments that are fast-paced and dynamic rather than stable or predictable. They’re open to change and comfortable with a certain level of uncertainty, preferring variety over routine.

As someone who’s invested in hundreds of top YC startups, I find none of this surpising. While of course founder personalities vary and there’s no single personality archetype of a successful founder, most of the best founders I’ve worked with can be described by these traits.

There’s a lot more I could share about YC unicorn founders from our data, but I think this is a good place to wrap up this post. In case you’re wondering if YC unicorn founders have different characteristics than YC founders in general, the answer is “yes” but that’s best explained in my post On Rebel Theorem 3.0.

If you’re an investor, happy unicorn hunting!