Why to Not Not Start a Startup
March 2007(This essay is derived from talks at the 2007 Startup School and the Berkeley CSUA.)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.
- ▪March 2007(This essay is derived from talks at the 2007 Startup School and the Berkeley CSUA.)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.
Paul Graham — Essays files mainly under blogs. We currently carry 219 of its stories.
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| Original publisher | Paul Graham — Essays |
| Canonical URL | http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html |
| Publication time | Not provided by source |
| Retrieval time | 2026-07-26T08:49:07.854Z |
| Last seen | 2026-07-26T08:49:32.059Z |
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| Cluster | GEPomnPpaI7Q · 2 stories |
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Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Want to start a startup? Get funded by Y Combinator. March 2007(This essay is derived from talks at the 2007 Startup School and the Berkeley CSUA.)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.So about half the founders from that first summer, less than two years ago, are now rich, at least by their standards.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Paul Graham — Essays.