Travel-related services are an efficient market: consumers prepared to spend money, businesses competing through innovation. Y Combinator has funded more than a dozen startups in the travel industry. There’s companies that provide solutions for flight, local transportation, and lodging. Continue reading
Stripe has added new support for payouts, announced on the Stripe company blog. Payouts enable businesses to automate sending money through Stripe to bank accounts of third-party recipients. These new features are especially useful for marketplaces, which have recently reached new levels of demand because of both smartphones and the so-called share economy. The new payout features are one of two major updates since I last wrote about Stripe in early March. In that post, I named Stripe as the next Dropbox or Airbnb. Continue reading
OMGPOP, from YC S07 and makers of Draw Something, was acquired last year by Zynga for $180 million dollars. Yesterday, Zynga announced major layoffs: 520 employees (18% of its workforce) and closure of three major offices (New York, Los Angeles, and Dallas). Based on a series of tweets by OMGPOP personnel, those layoffs apparently include OMGPOP’s offices and most of its staff. This seems to be the final chapter in OMGPOP after sudden popularity and a hasty acquisition. Continue reading
What, if any, unique characteristics of Y Combinator itself create substantial value in its portfolio companies? 37 YC Funded Companies Valued Over $40m was my previous blog post. That post was based on a tweet by Paul Graham that was subsequently reported by, among others, Business Insider and TechCrunch. The question I was left with after writing my post was: But did Y Combinator itself actually cause those companies to be worth that amount? Continue reading
“As of now, 37 YC cos have valuations of or sold for at least $40m.” That’s according to a recent tweet by Paul Graham. Mr. Graham elaborates in a follow-up tweet that 37 is from a total 511 companies. So about 7% of all YC companies either are, or were at the time of their exit, worth at least $40 million dollars. I have posted below completely unofficial amounts for all publicly known exits by YC companies. There’s also some thoughtful discussion about this on Hacker News. Continue reading
Y Combinator has added four new part-time partners, one new full-time partner, and a full-time partner is reducing his role to part-time. That’s all according to a post on the official Y Combinator blog at Posthaven. Three of these new advisors have previously founded YC-funded startups. One of the new advisors is the first YC partner with direct experience taking a company through an initial public offering. Continue reading
Crocodoc has been acquired by Box, announced by Box via press release and Crocodoc’s company blog. Crocodoc is a YC W10 company that makes document-management technology that is used primarily by businesses. Crocodoc’s products include software that converts Microsoft Office files into HTML5, secure document embedding and sharing solutions, and workflow collaboration tools. This acquisition is an exciting milestone in the ongoing competition for enterprise dominance. Continue reading
Zenefits seeks to eliminate the frustration of human resources. The company started as a California insurance broker for small businesses, providing group coverage quotes for medical, dental, and vision. Zenefits made two announcements this week: a new payroll processing service and also expansion to New York. Continue reading
Parse has been acquired by Facebook, as announced today on the Parse company blog and Facebook Developer blog. Parse is a platform-as-a-service for creating full-featured mobile apps. The “Heroku for mobile” went through YC S11 and now powers more than 60,000 apps. Comments from Parse and Facebook indicate this acquisition addresses long-term objectives for both companies, rather than merely being an acquisition for talent. Continue reading
Posterous, from YC S08, will shut down on April 30. The team behind the popular “share anything” blogging platform was acqui-hired by Twitter in March 2012. If you use Posterous and have waited until the last minute to move your blogs, you still have some options. Those options include Weebly and Posthaven. Continue reading
