I don't think many people actually think that. We've said publicly many times that we'd be pleasantly surprised if the success rate was as high as 50%.
You may be pleased by a 50% success rate, but how many of the 50% who don't succeed will be pleased?
(Not just being facetious -- I've heard stories about YCers whose companies failed being hired by other YC companies or otherwise finding good positions as a result of their YC experience, but a few anecdotes is no substitute for data.)
I fall in the 50% who did not succeed. I stepped down from Contagion Health (imoveyou.com, S2010) at the end of our batch, but my co-founder Jen is still at it and looking for a new co-founder.
Reasons for failure aside, I have no regrets at all. It was a completely amazing experience with amazing people and amazing opportunities. I'm still very close with many companies from my batch and actively helping a couple of those.
I can't say I would have done anything differently since I wouldn't want to miss out on any part of what happened.
"Not succeeding" is not so bad. Life goes on while I work on my next project, this time focusing on building revenue instead of raising money—a refreshing change. I don't know if my current project is a great fit for YC yet, but I can definitely see myself applying for YC again someday.
Most of them. Those who don't succeed have a big pile of successful startups who know them well and will hire them (if they stil have the startup bug). They've gotten a guided tour of the valley-style startup path-- next time will be easier.
It'd be an interesting experiment to track down all of the YC companies that have fully failed to date and ask them, "knowing what you know now, do you wish you'd chosen a different path?" My guess is that 90%+ would do YC again in a heartbeat (though perhaps with a different co-founder or different market/idea).
I've heard stories about YCers whose companies failed being hired by other YC companies
I've heard successful YC companies referred to as being like piranhas (or something like that). Any time another YC company shows signs of failing, the others tend to wonder about hiring opportunities.
I'm curious: how did you extrapolate from Wil's points on how to be a successful YC applicant that he also thought all YC companies are going to be successful?
These are qualities for successful founders, not successful companies. There are a myriad of reasons why a startup might fail. Having founders with the traits outlined in this essay helps prevent the founders from being one of those reasons. That's why YC looks for these traits.
Since YC screens applicants, they can select the ones they feel are best suited for success. Based on past experience, those with the traits in this essay are the most successful. Minimizing the founders as the source of failure means YC might have more successes, on average.
As pg said, even YC would be surprised if their "success" rate is more than 50%. Being accepted into YC doesn't guarantee success... Creating a successful company is hard!
I don't really think that the post implies that belief at all. This line in particular demonstrates the number of people already IN YC who are still rather unsure about things:
"one of us remarked that looking at everyone else in the batch, they're still in disbelief that they got in at all, and a bunch of us starred the comment in agreement, even those batch mates that I think are amazing"
I think that for the average startup your chance of success would improve in a statistically significant way but this would be really hard to quantify as if you get into YC you were probably already more likely to succeed on your own anyway.
It also depends a lot on how success is defined, in the return on investment for investors or in how it effects/improves the founders/employees lives. Getting a talent acquisition and working on something awesome at Facebook or similar could be a big success for the founders even though there is little there for the investors.
