(Fairly so. They seem to offer a blurry line on what they consider "portfolio" sometimes, not going out of their way to differentiate accelerator vs later stage investments)
>>(it’s important to distinguish between companies that went through the accelerator and cases where the investment firm made a small late-stage investment in the company)
Also a shot at Techstars, who have been known to lump in late-stage fund investments with their accelerator returns. Writing a tiny check into Uber's B-round has nothing to do with their accelerator program, for example, and it's disingenuous when they conflate the two.
I should mention that they have been doing a better job distinguishing this lately.
Ah, thanks for clarifying what round that was, and kudos to David! Like I said, you guys have been doing a better job distinguishing between your accelerator and venture portfolio, although that hasn't always been the case.
In a similar vein, what are your thoughts on Techstars calling themselves "the #1 startup accelerator in the world" and claiming "the best results" for their program? Given that YC's performance is roughly ~12X yours, this does seem to be somewhat of a misstatement. That is, unless you're claiming to be #1 for some arbitrary metric that isn't actually the benchmark for your industry (which to be clear, is the market cap of the companies you fund).
I think Techstars is clearly a great program, but stuff like that just strikes me as disingenuous. :)
I personally (speaking for myself) never cared for "the #1 startup accelerator" wording, and now that Techstars has built a small marketing team you'll have noticed that we talk about Techstars a lot differently - http://www.techstars.com/ :)
Yep, YC companies have raised a lot more money and have a higher total valuation, but YC also has a two-year head start! Based on any reasonable metric, Techstars has better results than any other accelerator - http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators
(Fairly so. They seem to offer a blurry line on what they consider "portfolio" sometimes, not going out of their way to differentiate accelerator vs later stage investments)
>>(it’s important to distinguish between companies that went through the accelerator and cases where the investment firm made a small late-stage investment in the company)