Startup Investing Trends

June 2013 (This talk was written for an audience of investors.) Y Combinator has now funded 564 startups including the current batch, which has 53.

2013 年 6 月（本演讲是为投资者受众撰写的。）Y Combinator 目前已资助 564 家初创公司，其中包括当前批次的 53 家。

The total valuation of the 287 that have valuations (either by raising an equity round, getting acquired, or dying) is about $11.7 billion, and the 511 prior to the current batch have collectively raised about $1.7 billion.

已估值的 287 家公司（无论是通过股权融资、被收购还是死亡）的总估值约为 117 亿美元，而本批次之前的 511 家公司总共筹集了约 17 亿美元。

[ 1 ] As usual those numbers are dominated by a few big winners.

[1] 与往常一样，这些数字由少数大赢家主导。

The top

顶部

10 startups account for 8.6 of that 11.7 billion.

10 家初创公司占这 117 亿美元中的 8.6 家。

But there is a peloton of younger startups behind them.

但他们背后有一群年轻的初创公司。

There are about 40 more that have a shot at being really big.

还有大约 40 个公司有机会成为真正的大公司。

Things got a little out of hand last summer when we had 84 companies in the batch, so we tightened up our filter to decrease the batch size.

去年夏天，事情有点失控，当时我们的批次中有 84 家公司，因此我们加强了筛选，以减少批次规模。

[ 2 ] Several journalists have tried to interpret that as evidence for some macro story they were telling, but the reason had

[2] 几位记者试图将其解释为他们所讲述的某些宏观故事的证据，但原因是

nothing to do with any external trend.

与任何外部趋势无关。

The reason was that we discovered we were using an n² algorithm, and we needed to buy time to fix it.

原因是我们发现我们使用的是 n² 算法，我们需要花时间来修复它。

Fortunately we've come up with several techniques for sharding YC, and the problem now seems to be fixed.

幸运的是，我们已经想出了几种对 YC 进行分片的技术，现在问题似乎已经得到解决。

With a new more scaleable model and only 53 companies, the current batch feels like a walk in the park.

有了新的更具规模化的模型，并且只有 53 家公司，当前的批次感觉就像在公园里散步一样轻松。

I'd guess we can grow another 2 or 3x before hitting the next bottleneck.

我猜想在遇到下一个瓶颈之前我们可以再增长 2 到 3 倍。

[ 3 ] One consequence of funding such a large number of startups is that we see trends early.

[3] 资助如此多的初创企业的后果之一是我们能够及早看到趋势。

And since fundraising is one of the main things we help startups with, we're in a good position to notice trends in investing.

由于筹款是我们帮助初创企业的主要事情之一，因此我们能够很好地注意到投资趋势。

I'm going to take a shot at describing where these trends are leading.

我将尝试描述这些趋势的主导方向。

Let's start with the most basic question: will the future be better or worse than the past?

让我们从最基本的问题开始：未来会比过去更好还是更糟？

Will investors, in the aggregate,

总体而言，投资者是否会

make more money or less?

赚更多钱还是更少？

I think more.

我想多了。

There are multiple forces at work, some of which will decrease returns, and some of which will increase them.

有多种力量在起作用，其中一些会减少回报，而另一些则会增加回报。

I can't predict for sure which forces will prevail, but I'll describe them and you can decide for yourself.

我无法确定哪种力量会占上风，但我会描述它们，你可以自己决定。

There are two big forces driving change in startup funding: it's becoming cheaper to start a startup, and startups are becoming a more normal thing to do.

有两大力量推动了创业融资的变革：创办一家初创企业变得越来越便宜，而且初创企业正变得越来越正常。

When I graduated from college in 1986, there were essentially two options: get a job or go to grad school.

1986 年我大学毕业时，基本上有两个选择：找工作或读研究生。

Now there's a third: start your own company.

现在有第三种：创办自己的公司。

That's a big change.

这是一个很大的变化。

In principle it was possible to start your own company in 1986 too, but it didn't seem like a real possibility.

原则上，你也可以在 1986 年创办自己的公司，但这似乎不太可能。

It seemed possible to start a consulting company, or a niche product company, but it didn't seem possible to start a company that would

创办一家咨询公司或一家利基产品公司似乎是可能的，但似乎不可能创办一家能够提供服务的公司。