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Stripe Is Now a $20B Company

(www.bloomberg.com)
563 points jonknee | 3 comments | 26 Sep 18 18:04 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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haaen ◴[26 Sep 18 19:17 UTC] No.18079316[source]▶
Stripe is the second most valuable YC company. Total valuation of all companies that YC funded (more than 1,900) now exceeds 100 billon dollars.

Airbnb has a private valuation of 31 billion. Stripe has a private valuation of 20 billion. Dropbox has a public valuation (DBX) of 11 billion.

So the two most valuable companies account for about half the total value of all the YC companies. This is what a power law looks like!

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chadash ◴[26 Sep 18 20:48 UTC] No.18080137[source]▶
And this is why Y Combinator may not be right for your startup. The 100 billion dollars of valuation listed on YC's website may not be up to date, but it's clear that the top 10% of companies make up the overwhelming majority of their portfolio. So they go for moonshots. And they also invest in multiple competitors in the same space in the hopes that one will pan out.

So if you're building the kind of company that might be worth $100 million someday but won't ever be worth $100 billion, VCs and startup incubators might not be right for you, but just remember that a rejection from them doesn't necessarily mean you aren't on to something great.

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1. fanzhang ◴[26 Sep 18 21:47 UTC] No.18080547[source]▶
What is an accelerator or a funding group for whom the portfolio is not following that power law? For example one where the top 20 companies each comprise say appx 2% of the portfolio?
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2. anujabro ◴[27 Sep 18 00:26 UTC] No.18081351[source]▶
One that all have similar successes (e.g. all fail)

Odds are most early stage venture portfolios have a power law distribution, but of different magnitude.

Later stage you go, the more normal the distribution will look

3. maehwasu ◴[27 Sep 18 01:02 UTC] No.18081472[source]▶
Growth stage private equity buying out companies for multiples of EBITDA.

Whenever you're investing in early-stage companies with low marginal costs, that deal primarily in bits, not atoms, you're likely to end up with power law outcome distributions.