I had a hypothesis that YC companies sell to other YC companies. Many times to their own batch, other times to older YC companies. One of my YC friends told me that when they approached a big, well-known company for a potential pilot, the director of engineering there was a YC alum. He said "yeah, I understand" and gave them a pilot or LOI.
My theory is that most of the logos YC startups show on their landing pages will be other YC companies. They'll use that momentum at Demo Day to raise their seed round. What this also means is that sometimes, when I read Launch HNs or look at other YC products, I get the perception that they're very mature products (kudos to their design), and often that perception comes from the logos. So as someone looking to buy a YC product, I'm not sure if I'm being hustled or if they actually have a good customer base.
I'm not judging them. This is genuine curiosity, and also, this is what the YC advantage means. I set out to test my hypothesis by running my agents against YC's Summer 2026 batch: visit each landing page, look for customer logos, and check what percent of those are YC companies.
What do I get out of this? Probably nothing :p Just curious.
Here's a quick summary: - My hypothesis that most logos will be other YC companies is wrong. - In certain sub segments like horizontal AI tools, I did see that ~40% logos are YC companies.
Check the link for the analysis. Curious what your thoughts are? Any other directions we can push the analysis into?
[This post is handwritten by me]