Y-Combinator

Some of the world’s most ubiquitous products start off as an idea on the back of an envelope. Without daring, mission-driven entrepreneurs, and a budding ecosystem of talent and capital, these products wouldn’t have become some of the world’s most valuable businesses.

?Y Combinator, launched in March 2005, is the world’s most selective startup accelerator and investor, and has backed some of the world’s most successful companies – Airbnb, DoorDash, Gitlab, Dropbox, Stripe and Dropbox are some of the names that have gone through YC’s 3-month accelerator program. In total, YC has backed more than 3,000 companies – its top companies have a combined valuation of over $400 billion and have created over 70,000 jobs.

In a rapidly growing ecosystem, founders need to be able to focus on building their idea. That is exactly what YC does. New founders, more often than not, need experienced entrepreneurs to soundboard off of, and YC provides them with exactly that, in addition to capital, and access to world-class talent – the three ingredients that each successful startup has been able to harness.

What does YC offer?

Only the top 1.5% of applicants globally get accepted into YC – that’s approximately 600 companies a year from over 40,000 applicants. These elite few, labeled the YC Mafia by jealous outsiders, benefit from a rigorous 3-month training program, as well as $500,000 in funding.

During the program, founders will join several calls a week with YC Partners, former Alumni, and other companies in their batch, which help them in every aspect of building their business – recruitment, product, sales, growth marketing, operations, and most crucially, learning how to pitch to investors and how to manage fundraising processes.

The program ends with Demo Day, where each startup in the batch pitches to every YC Alumnus and 1,500 venture capital investors, that attend by invitation only.

Global venture funding shattered all records in 2021

$643 billion was invested by venture capital investors last year, marking a 92% increase over 2020 and a 10x increase over the last decade.

Investment in early-stage companies showed the highest growth and reached $201 billion in 2021. Of this amount, almost $30 billion was invested at the Seed stage, i.e., before a company finds product-market fit and the business is deemed viable.

We hear that a company that is still in stealth (not public knowledge yet) and launching in Sudan soon has been accepted into YC’s current batch, which if true, would be the biggest piece of news for Sudan’s startup ecosystem yet. Stay tuned, we are sure there will be more news about this soon.

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