Y Combinator Top Companies - 2019

by Michael Seibel10/2/2019

We’re excited to share the list of 2019 Top Y Combinator Companies. We also included top exits.1

We put this list together to help potential employees, partners, and late stage investors get to know a wider set of YC companies. If you’re looking for a job at one of our top companies, you can hit the Apply button to be taken to their careers page.

The companies in this list are sorted by valuation. Why do we use valuation? We have always said that valuation is a poor way to measure a company’s value in the short term, and we still believe this to be the case. We consistently warn our companies not to over-optimize their fundraising for a high valuation. That said, it’s the most commonly available metric to compare companies in the startup world. Other metrics, like revenue, are more often kept private. We have a number of impressive companies who would appear on the list or rank even higher if we counted other metrics (revenue, revenue/employee, secondary valuation, etc).

Another thing to note is that this is not an exhaustive list of the top YC companies. We allowed companies to opt out of being listed for any reason. To see a full list of YC companies, go here.

Here are some interesting stats about this year’s list:

  • We now have over 100 companies valued at $150M+ and 19 companies at $1B+.

  • 28 of the companies on the list went through YC Growth. The YC Growth Program is designed for founder-CEOs who are leading rapidly growing companies approaching 50 employees. The program focuses on specific issues that every startup has to overcome in order to scale successfully. Read more about the YC Growth Program here.

  • 13% of the companies are HQed outside of the Bay Area.

  • Here’s a sector breakdown of the companies on the list:
    ○ B2B Software and Services – 51%
    ○ Financial Technology and Services – 16%
    ○ Consumer Goods and Services – 11%
    ○ Education – 4%
    ○ Consumer Media – 3%
    ○ Biotech – 3%
    ○ Automotive – 3%
    ○ Real Estate – 2%
    ○ Healthcare – 2%
    ○ Construction – 2%
    ○ Aerospace – 2%
    ○ Energy and Environment – 1%

We are proud to know the founders behind these companies and be part of their stories.

Notes
1. Top Exits: For top exits we counted only the money that went to the cap table at the time of acquisition. We did not include retention bonuses or the value founders and investors received from an acquiring company’s stock post-liquidation event.

Author

  • Michael Seibel

    Michael Seibel is a Group Partner and Managing Director, Early Stage at YC. He was the cofounder and CEO Justin.tv and Socialcam. Socialcam sold to Autodesk in 2012 and Justin.tv became Twitch.