Few noteworthy YC startups which have had huge impact in YC ecosystem
Airbnb - 83 YC startups spawned
Stripe - 67 YC startups spawned
Dropbox - 50 YC startups spawned
Justin.tv/Twitch - 47 YC startups spawned
More recently founded YC startups which have spawned a lot more YC startups
Rappi - 21 YC startups spawned
Brex - 20 YC startups spawned
Scale AI - 19 YC startups spawned
At first I did not explore the tree visualizations in your web app: I simply noticed an index of company trees. Using the tree visualizer (which shows founders' names and pictures), I immediately realized that these trees represent complex human stories involving thousands of years of individual people's hard work. Interpreted that way, the data deserve a degree of awed respect that I did not show in my original comment. Truly sorry for that.
If you're curious about the shape of the startup ecosystem the way I am, there are a few things you could try. (In what follows I'm assuming "full graph" means company-company links with timestamps, not stories about individual people). pyvis has a feature that allows you to build a static html file with an embedded interactive representation of a graph. The data is embedded in the file, so you might not be able to share that unless you dropped enough information to conform such sharing to your data license. IIRC the static file has limited query/filter functionality so it can be difficult to make large graphs manageable for visualization. If that happens you can try using a graph database with a query UI. I remember another HN submission last year that (IIRC) used neo4j as a backend and provided a web UI with this kind of query/visualize workflow. I believe they also shared Github repos with the front-end/back-end code.
Anyway, thank you for sharing your project and sorry for the shit comment.
Dasha Cherepennikova to
loondri•1mo ago
fleahunter•1mo ago
I've noticed trends where certain skills or experiences seem to bubble up in waves – like when a specific tech stack becomes popular and then a bunch of startups pop up around it. It’s almost like there’s a breeding ground effect happening.
And what about the concept of mentorship? Do you think these 'family trees' could lead to more structured mentorship, where founders from successful startups actively guide the next generation? Could be an interesting angle to explore!
I’m curious about Edge cases too. Like, what happens when a founder breaks away from the traditional path, either founding a startup without that chain or maybe even pivoting away from the typical YC model? It makes these genealogies feel both fascinating and a touch limiting. I love seeing these connections getting mapped out, but part of me wonders if we might miss some innovative outliers by focusing too much on these chains.
twosdai•1mo ago
Basically all those people would go all the same networking events sponsored by yc. There's not pressure so much as these people all have frequent and paid for, opportunities to "hang out" and talk about tech stuff together. Its possible you could define this as "pressure" but I think it's more of who you hangout with rather than some top down implicit force.