Investor directory

Y Combinator

Y Combinator is a startup accelerator based in Mountain View, California, founded in 2005. It has pioneered a new funding model for early-stage startups by investing a modest amount of capital, typically around $150,000, in a large number of companies twice a year. Over a three-month program, Y Combinator collaborates closely with these startups to prepare them for investor pitches and enhance their business strategies. Each funding cycle concludes with Demo Day, where startups present to an exclusive audience of investors. Y Combinator focuses on various sectors, including business software, education, healthcare, and financial technology, among others. In addition to initial funding, it offers ongoing support through its extensive alumni network. Since its inception, Y Combinator has funded over 630 startups, contributing significantly to the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Silicon Valley and beyond.

Focus

Seed RoundPre Seed RoundSeries AEarly VentureScale StageShow more
http://ycombinator.com
https://angel.co/company/y-combinator
https://crunchbase.com/organization/y-combinator
https://facebook.com/ycombinator
https://linkedin.com/company/y-combinator
https://pitchbook.com/profiles/investor/40420-36
https://signal.nfx.com/firms/y-combinator
https://twitter.com/ycombinator
https://www.capitaliq.com/CIQDotNet/company.aspx?companyId=32514318
https://www.privateequityinternational.com/database/#/profile?id=14195

Gustaf Alstromer

Group Partner

Matt Bogrand

Associate, YC Continuity Fund

Timothy Brady

Partner

Craig R. Cannon

Director of Marketing

Adora Cheung

Partner

Nic Dardenne

Principal

Aaron Epstein

Group Partner

Brad Flora

Group Partner

Jared Friedman

Managing Director, Software and Group Partner

Aaron Harris

Partner

Carolynn Levy

Partner

Bradford (Brad) Lightcap

Associate, YC Continuity

Kat Manalac

Managing Partner

Eric Migicovsky

Partner

Kirsty Nathoo

Partner

Verena Prescher

Director of Finance

Geoff Ralston

president

Ali Rowghani

Managing Partner

Arnav Sahu

Principal

Michael Seibel

Managing Director

Harj Taggar

Partner

Past deals in Publishing

Draft

Series A in 2021
ContentFly makes generating quality content ridiculously easy & affordable for any business, for a flat monthly fee. Get content on-demand, high quality, and written by professional writers.

Foster

Seed Round in 2021
Community-powered writing workflow driven by some of the internet's best writers, editors, and experts.

Curvenote

Pre Seed Round in 2021
Curvenote is a platform to share, publish and work on interactive scientific content. Work with your collaborators to develop and communicate complex ideas, without the static limitations of print documents.

Spline

Seed Round in 2021
Spline is a company that offers a design tool for creating and publishing three-dimensional web experiences without the need for coding. Its platform allows users to easily build and iterate on designs, producing production-ready results. The tool supports the creation of three-dimensional text and basic geometric shapes, while also providing options for editing materials, importing models, and controlling design outcomes. This functionality enables designers to construct simple and cost-effective objects efficiently, streamlining the design process for web applications.

Draft

Pre Seed Round in 2020
ContentFly makes generating quality content ridiculously easy & affordable for any business, for a flat monthly fee. Get content on-demand, high quality, and written by professional writers.

Pepper

Pre Seed Round in 2019
Pepper is a personalized nutrition company based in Chicago, Illinois, founded in 2016. It focuses on empowering individuals to manage their dietary habits at home through innovative kitchen technology. The company is also developing a suite of nutrition APIs that assist health, food, insurance, and technology firms in enhancing user experiences and making informed business decisions. Additionally, Pepper operates a content-mediation platform that connects skilled writers with organizations seeking customized content solutions, ensuring high-quality writing services tailored to various needs.

TrendMD

Seed Round in 2016
TrendMD provides article recommendations for doctors. They partner with scientific publishers such Elsevier and Oxford University Press and have them add a line of their JavaScript code to their journal websites so that they can show 10 similar article links at the bottom of each page. Their mission is to accelerate the rate at which humanity's knowledge advances, by matching readers with the right articles. They serve 500 million recommendations to more than 60 million readers per month and are nearing profitability after recently graduating from Y Combinator -- the startup accelerator that incubated Reddit, Dropbox, and Airbnb.

Booktrope

Angel Round in 2015
Booktrope develops a publishing platform and modern marketing engine for books of all kinds. It ceased operations in May 2016 and is based in Seattle, Washington.

Booktrope

Seed Round in 2015
Booktrope develops a publishing platform and modern marketing engine for books of all kinds. It ceased operations in May 2016 and is based in Seattle, Washington.

Tablo Publishing

Seed Round in 2014
Tablo is a new generation of publishing company that lets authors publish an eBook, Paperback and Hardcover book to every bookshop in the world with the click of a button. Publishing a book with Tablo is as easy as publishing a blog post, with gorgeous book templates and a one-click publishing experience, with on-demand print and distribution to over 40,000 retailers, live sales an insights, and the fairest royalties and terms available to authors.

Inkshares

Seed Round in 2014
Inkshares is a social platform that conflates the mechanics of crowdfunding with the distribution of traditional publishing to change the economics of book publishing. The authors submit book ideas and the readers share them, collaborate with authors, and pre-order their books. They publish books that hit their pre-order goal. Votes are cast with money as pre-orders, readers end up subsidizing their production costs. This greatly reduces their risk profile, meaning if a book doesn’t sell, the worst they can do is break even. Inkshares probes for hits without losing money. And it’s because of this model that they can pay authors 50% of gross revenue for print sales and 70% for ebook sales.

Inkshares

Seed Round in 2014
Inkshares is a social platform that conflates the mechanics of crowdfunding with the distribution of traditional publishing to change the economics of book publishing. The authors submit book ideas and the readers share them, collaborate with authors, and pre-order their books. They publish books that hit their pre-order goal. Votes are cast with money as pre-orders, readers end up subsidizing their production costs. This greatly reduces their risk profile, meaning if a book doesn’t sell, the worst they can do is break even. Inkshares probes for hits without losing money. And it’s because of this model that they can pay authors 50% of gross revenue for print sales and 70% for ebook sales.

Svbtle

Seed Round in 2013
Svbtle is publishing network that brings some of the best things from newspapers and magazines to a network of great people. They focus on the people, the writing, and the ideas. Everything else is secondary. Svbtle's goal is to make it easier and more natural for interesting people to write down their thoughts. In the process, they also hope to help their members become better writers. To accomplish these goals, they provide benefits that aren’t usually associated with blogging, like copyediting and fact-checking, to all members, for free.

Submittable

Venture Round in 2012
Submittable helps thousands of organizations worldwide collect and review any type of content in one easy-to-use platform. It was launched by three creatives, a writer, a filmmaker, and a musician, who wanted to simplify the process of submitting their work. Today, Submittable is a cloud-based submission management platform that makes it easy to accept, review, and make decisions on any kind of digital content online. Submittable has collected more than 10 million submissions from thousands of customers worldwide and is backed by True Ventures, Next Frontier Capital, The Knight Foundation, StartFund, 77Ventures, Y Combinator, and a few other amazing investors. The platform mission is to make a crappy process better for as many people as possible. Submittable was founded in 2010 and is headquartered in Missoula, Montana, USA, and with an office in New York.

Hyperink

Venture Round in 2011
Hyperink, Inc. publishes eBooks. It also provides cover design, layout, and customer service. The company offers books in various categories, including biographies, blog to book, career, diet and fitness, education, entertainment, how to, quicklet, self-help, and technology. It distributes its books through its own website and other online retailers. The company was incorporated in 2010 and is based in San Francisco, California.

Newslabs

Seed Round in 2010
NewsLabs offers a platform that looks to help "old school" journalists adapt to the web, by giving them help with advertising, SEO, and other issues they may not have had to deal with before.

JobSyndicate

Seed Round in 2008
JobSyndicate is a job posting portal designed to connect companies with qualified candidates. Publishers can place JobSyndicate's widgets on their sites and earn half the bounty set by employers when visitors click through and get hired.

writewith

Seed Round in 2007
Writewith is a collaborative writing web app, enabling you to easily flow through the steps of writing, editing, and publishing a document with a group. A document is started by uploading an existing document (.doc, .txt, .rdf) or just typing away. After the initial draft is completed, you can invite other editors by email and assign them tasks. Writewith has full version control and even lets you post comments to each other, making it possible to edit together in real time. Currently Writewith is in beta testing with 15 college newspapers including Stanford and two of Canada's largest college papers (which even includes a national newswire).