Review on Y Combinator by Inioluwa Okedeji
Y Combinator: A Company With A Unique Funding Model For Developing Startup Businesses.
Y Combinator is another accelerator that mostly help in the development of startup ventures. Now, what makes Y Combinator different from other accelerators is how it chooses to help kickstart startup ventures with its own distinct model.
Y Combinator developed a model which will help the funding of startups at an early stage in the business. This model involves the investment of a small amount of money, which is around $150k, twice a year into selected large number of startups. Although it seems the investment amount has been reduced to $125k twice a year.
In addition, to ensure that these startups kickstart their businesses on a strong note, Y Combinator works with these startups for 6 months. Afterwards, these startups are now linked to investors who would invest in these startups, thus taking it to greater heights. In other to meet the eye of promising investors, each startups must have pitched their skills on a Demo day and then promising ventures will catch the eye of the selected investors in audience on that day.
I see Y Combinator services as similar to that of a scout, who scouts for promising startups, groom them for 6 months then unveil them on Demo day to investors who'll invest in these startups. Except that their services doesn't terminate after these startups have pitched their business models to investors, they continue to be a part of such ventures for life. So, this means that any engagement with Y Combinator lasts for the lifetime of such venture.
The public can also benefit from the Y Combinator as they've set aside a library section on their platform where interested learners can visit to delve into the knowledge and get advice from the experience the company has garnered over the years.
The application for the 2021 batch is also currently ongoing and interested entrepreneurs and owners of startup ventures can put in for the program on the Y Combinator official platform.
Pros
- Since its establishment, Y Combinator has successfully funded over 3000 startups.
- Y Combinator acts as scouts for promising startups who are then groomed to catch the eye of investors.
- This company is in partnership with many companies like Coinbase, Dropbox, Checkr, Scales, to mention a few
- It has a library where the public and interested entrepreneurs can read and gain knowledge from the pool of experiences they've garnered over the years.
Cons
- Well, I don't really have any thing to say in this aspect, but I feel that given the length of the time since Y Combinator has been established, the number of startups it has funded should be more than 3,000.
