YC W24 Batch Breakdown
Over the weekend, my co-founders Mila Dayan, Kirill Zakharov and I really enjoyed watching the YC Alumni Demo Day. Impressed by great startups and founders full of talent and ambition! Well done, Y Combinator!
Here are some of our less obvious findings:
Some new laws/regulations have made some interesting startups possible. It's important for aspiring founders to keep track of new laws/regulations. There's always a gap that startups can fill. As the world becomes more regulated, areas like compliance are full of new opportunities.
There's been a surge of interest in foundation models. This is clearly one of the most promising areas in AI startups today. YC's requests for startups even mentioned "foundation models for biological systems". Foundation models will probably be the next buzzword soon! 🙂
About 2/3 of the startups in W24 are AI-powered. However, if you look closely, many of them could solve user problems without AI features. So AI is not always a game changer.
Around 70% of startups are founded by people from FAANG and Big Tech companies, and 15% by people from Fortune 500 companies. This suggests that gaining experience in a large company may be one of the best opportunities for aspiring founders. In addition, 15% of founders come from Ivy League schools. YC bets on exceptional founders, again!
Many startups are tackling problems in insurance, investment banking, real estate, dentistry, etc. What these industries have in common is that they involve a lot of manual work and high costs. The use of AI seems much more promising here.
Verticalisation of AI: The specialisation of startups in specific industries is clearly on the rise.
Very few in crypto, AR/VR, climate tech, and broad B2C areas.
There's a strong focus on the US market, as in the previous batch. There are significantly fewer international founders and few startups targeting emerging markets.
More French founders. French YC startups often focus on relatively simple B2B products rather than deep tech, devtools or complex enterprise solutions. This may be partly because there's a generally higher level of product development in France, suggesting that investors have confidence in the product-led growth strategies of French founders.
Many W24 startups raise at valuations above $20 million. That's much higher than typical seed-stage companies and shows that the YC price premium is still very much in play.
We are three co-founders of Beau (YC S21) and we love 1:1 conversations with smart founders. Will be sharing some insights here, so sign up!
A couple of good reads from others:
Managing Director Jared Friedman shared a thread of YC startups that have trained their own models:
Top 10 W24 companies with highest website traffic, by Crustdata:
Good breakdown of W24 AI startups with examples, by Chrys Bader