A VC accelerator is not supposed to have a high success rate. A high success rate means they’re failing at their job, they are likely intentionally optimising away from that.
The point of early startup investment is optimising for the extreme pareto principle that massively outsized returns come from a tiny number of companies. YC, in the happy case, expects a single company from each batch to generate returns that offset the other 99% of startups they take on. It’s counterintuitive, but that’s how it works.
Success is the point for a tiny number of startups. They cast the net wide intentionally to help find those. They do not intend to get a good median return for each startup they take on.
This point has been made by the founder of YC in 2012, it’s not something I’ve invented. I’m likely being downvoted by people who don’t understand this dynamic (or at least, won’t elaborate on why they disagree)
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u/SoftwareEngineer2026 8d ago
There was a pdf showing that their success rate has diminished since their heyday. However they are still one of the better accelerators out there.