Y Combinator Opens Applications For New Class, As Total Funding For Alums Reaches $1.5B, Or $3.18M Each

Y Combinator founder Paul Graham tweeted today that the accelerator’s 464 startup graduates (prior to its current batch) have raised an average of $3.18 million in funding each, which means YC’s companies have landed a total of just under $1.5 billion.

In context, when Billy covered the incubator’s progress last summer, YC had launched 380 companies, which had raised just over $1 billion in total, with each company averaging about $2.7 million. So, over the course of the last six months (or one batch in YC terms), the accelerator’s startups have raised nearly $500 million and increased their average raise by nearly $500K.

Granted, as Billy pointed out at the time, those statistics are skewed by the top alums, like Dropbox and Airbnb, which have raised $257 million and $120 million, respectively, accounting for nearly 30 percent of total funding (at the time). Now they account for about 25 percent.

Y Combinator selects two classes of startups per year into their three-month program, during which the expanding team of mentors connects their teams with investors and invests in the companies. Initially, Yuri Milner and Ron Conway’s Start Fund invested $150K in each startup. However, in November, the accelerator created a new fund called YC VC and decreased its investment to $80K per startup in an effort to “become more startup friendly.”

YC VC also aimed to provide more time and involvement from VCs in the development of startups, and Graham has said previously that the partners have been looking to lower the overall size of its startup classes.

Graham explained at the time: “The reason we accepted fewer applications was that in summer 2012 we grew too fast … We had 66 companies in winter 2012, and that was fine, but for some reason more things than usual broke when we jumped from 66 to 84.”

This comes on the heels of YC beginning to accept applications for its Summer 2013 batch, applications for which are due by March 29th. So, startups can expect that, while the total number of applications for YC has continued to grow as the incubator grows, the next class size won’t continue the current trend. Instead, Graham said that there may be fewer than 50 companies in the mix this time around. Way down from the 84 companies in its largest class, Summer 2012.