Top all-time · #5351
Jared Heyman
Personal blog · jaredheyman.medium.comstartupsbusiness
Jared Heyman's personal blog at jaredheyman.medium.com covers startups and business. Since 2022, 15 different Hacker News readers have linked it 24 times, most often “On the life and death of YC startups”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-16, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (13) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Jared Heyman's Medium posts on Y Combinator's returns, founder outcomes and startup power-law returns, including charts of YC company results.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 13 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- On the life and death of YC startups5 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2022-12-13
- /on-the-176-annual-return-of-a-yc-startup-index-cf4ba8ebef194 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-09-27
- On $600B of Y Combinator startup success2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-05-11
What Hacker News says?
A) Very true! B) peaked* :) C) Can you think of any tech companies from the last 10 years that were successful? The answer is ultimately "they exist, but the victory condition is to be bought by MANGA, so you don't remember them even if you heard about them in the first place." EDIT: to add more context, this is a great post: https://jaredheyman.medium.com/on-the-176-annual-return-of-a... The TL;DR is that Stripe &…
Comment linking /on-the-176-annual-return-of-a-yc-startup-index-cf4ba8ebef19
on “Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator”Submitted On $600B of Y Combinator startup success as a story · 68 points
HN discussionYou sound like you are making a lot of excuses, but I actually deeply agree with every negative point that you make. As you are pointing out, the risk of being a founder is just not worth it for you or most people, financially or socially or personally. It rarely makes sense even if you are already wealthy or privileged: even given the advantages you have correctly identified, the expected outcome is failure. Withou…
Comment linking /on-600b-of-y-combinator-startup-success-fc85b2076d0d
on “We need a middle class for startups”Submitted On the Y Combinator Summer 2021 batch as a story · 39 points
HN discussionYea it does! [1]. [1]: https://jaredheyman.medium.com/on-the-176-annual-return-of-a...
Comment linking /on-the-176-annual-return-of-a-yc-startup-index-cf4ba8ebef19
on “Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth”Submitted The New Y Combinator as a story · 8 points
HN discussionYeah: VC incentives do not match with founders incentives - share classes are just one obvious signal of that. Good article on that conflict: https://siliconhillslawyer.com/2019/02/18/relationships-and-... > ~9% where valuable enough for investors to take profit Or aquihired. Best analysis I have seen of YC: https://jaredheyman.medium.com/on-the-life-and-death-of-y-co... Disappointingly YC hasn't provided any good a…
Comment linking /on-the-life-and-death-of-y-combinator-startups-d58aa03421f0
on “Why you should not apply to YC”Submitted On the Y Combinator “premium” (2022 update) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionBecause statistically it’s going to fail and even if you do make some side income, it’s not going to substitute even for an entry level enterprise dev job. Also, the time one poster was spending “selling potatoes online” (literally not trying to be funny), he would be better off, spending that time doing interview prep and job hopping making more money. You can take these numbers for YC investments and draw your own…
Comment linking /on-the-life-and-death-of-y-combinator-startups-d58aa03421f0
on “Laid off for the first time in my career, and twice in one year”Submitted On the life and death of YC startups as a story · 3 points
HN discussionPublic...? Oh, you mean the ones meant to be left holding the bag. When there's real money to be made investing in YC is off limits to the public: https://jaredheyman.medium.com/on-the-176-annual-return-of-a...
Comment linking /on-the-176-annual-return-of-a-yc-startup-index-cf4ba8ebef19
on “OpenAI Needs $400B In The Next 12 Months”Submitted On the life and death of Y Combinator startups as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI think the point being made is more subtle than you're appreciating: it's not just any defense firm, it's a defense firm founded by engineers who have worked on multiple Elon projects. I understand we try to stay away from politics here, but speaking objectively+non-normatively: Elon has been known to greatly favor working with people that have worked at his companies, and he now has immense influence over the cont…
Comment linking /on-the-last-decade-of-y-combinator-fa19b387846a
on “Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships”Submitted On Y Combinator batch quality at scale as a story · 2 points
HN discussion>anyone can invest in software in the public market and through institutional investments like mutual funds, ETFs, ect. "Public" being the keyword. There is some irony in being on HN, a YC site, yet a random HN user cannot invest in a YC company: https://jaredheyman.medium.com/on-the-176-annual-return-of-a...
Comment linking /on-the-176-annual-return-of-a-yc-startup-index-cf4ba8ebef19
on “How Europe crushes innovation”Submitted On the $500k Y Combinator standard deal as a story · 2 points
HN discussionFounders at YC have an expected return of ~$0 (most fail, moderate success only pays preferred shares and common gets $0, power law returns). https://jaredheyman.medium.com/on-the-life-and-death-of-y-co... Early employees often invest $ (cheap salary) but they don’t get preferential shares for their money - that’s a hell of an uneconomic trade. Sure, early employees get to do “Startup University”, however the strict…
Comment linking /on-the-life-and-death-of-y-combinator-startups-d58aa03421f0
on “A rarely mentioned benefit of YC is Work At A Startup”Submitted Data-driven tips for YC startup founders as a story · 1 points
HN discussionTake a look at the second chat at https://jaredheyman.medium.com/on-the-176-annual-return-of-a... . The vast majority of returns for YC are for the companies at the tippy top of that chart (Airbnb, Stripe, Dropbox and a few others). YC certainly provides a nice package to founders. But they are definitely in the unicorn business.
Comment linking /on-the-176-annual-return-of-a-yc-startup-index-cf4ba8ebef19
on “Ask HN: Tips for Solopreneur?”Submitted YC Exits as a story · 1 points
HN discussionAgree. I have yet to see YC publish figures on founder returns - they mostly talk about the successes. https://jaredheyman.medium.com/on-the-life-and-death-of-y-co... Amazing video on bootstrapping: https://youtube.com/watch?v=otbnC2zE2rw There are funds trying to succeed at the many-small-successes model of investing - personally I am skeptical (from my own experience) because the natural failure rate is so high (b…
Comment linking /on-the-life-and-death-of-y-combinator-startups-d58aa03421f0
on “Is Y Combinator worth the money? Brutally honest review of W22 batch experience”Submitted On the life and death of Y Combinator startups as a story · 1 points
HN discussionAstonishingly the graph shows that 50% of YC investments are still active after 10 years. That is definitely not a fail fast model. Also references the power law of returns: https://jaredheyman.medium.com/on-the-eery-predictability-of... Those two facts show that being YC or a VC is a good business, but being a founder is financially risky. And presumably the median early employee is kidding themselves on their expe…
Comment linking /on-the-eery-predictability-of-yc-startup-valuations-71140c2633f8
on “On the life and death of Y Combinator startups”Startups have a power-law of returns, so founders should also have a power-law. It is hard to find any good data - YC is a VC so why would they want to tell you that the median return is zero? I am disappointed that YC sell a dream, but don’t provide any data on historical results for founders. This is a good analysis for historic YC companies: https://jaredheyman.medium.com/on-the-life-and-death-of-y-co...
Comment linking /on-the-life-and-death-of-y-combinator-startups-d58aa03421f0
on “Ask HN: Do YC Startup founders become millionaires?”
