Paul Graham Says Y Combinator Companies Have Raised More Than $1 Billion
Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham tweeted today that YC’s 380 companies (prior to the current batch) have raised $1,048,274,000. Y Combinator, which launched in 2005, takes on two classes of startups per year into their three month program, during which they mentor and connect the founders and invest in the companies.
The total amount of funding raised by the 380 companies prior to the current YC batch is $1,048,274,000.
— Paul Graham (@paulg) July 25, 2012
Even the simplest of mathematicians can look at the two numbers and divide the larger by the smaller and infer that, on average, Y Combinator companies raise more than $2,759,000. But not all YC companies are created equal. Two of Y Combinator’s most notable alums, Dropbox ($257 million) and Airbnb ($120 million), account for almost 36% of the impressive funding total.
When you add in other well-funded companies, like Scribd ($25.8 million), Disqus ($10.5 million), and Posterous ($10.1 million), the total for the remaining 375 Y Combinator companies is still an enormous, but significantly diminished, $624.9 million.
This is the latest eye-popping number from Y Combinator, following Forbes’ report in April that Y Combinator companies were worth a total of $7.78 billion.
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Despite Android Nearly Doubling Activations, iOS Still Leads The Enterprise
This morning, enterprise solutions provider Good Technology released the results of its latest activation report which offers a snapshot of mobile device trends in the enterprise. The company found that, despite the fact that Android smartphone usage in the enterprise nearly doubled quarter-over-quarter, iOS continues to be dominant platform there, currently led by the iPhone 4S.
The results further back up a report arriving earlier this week from mobile platform development company Appcelerator. It released data from a large survey of its developer community, finding that iOS has been surging ahead of Android, at least in terms of developer interest (53% said Apple was better positioned to win the enterprise, compared with 38% for Android).
While the latter report spoke more to developer sentiment – also a good way to tell which way the tide is turning, Good’s report comes from actual activations of both smartphones and tablets from thousands of its current enterprise customers. It’s more of a “where are we now?” kind of thing.
When we last looked at Good’s data was in January, when Android activations were only 35% of the total, compared with iPhone’s 65%. Today, Good says that Android activations reached 36.9% of total activations – a small bump, despite the fact that corporate use of Android phones and tablets grew 10% quarter-over-quarter. But Android activations have been slowly and erratically growing – 29% in Q4 2011, 32% in Q3 2011 and 25% one year ago in Q2 2011. Good attributed this quarter’s growth to the availability of new devices from Samsung. Meanwhile, iOS’s slight decline in growth was chalked up to “market saturation.” That’s what Apple’s earnings from yesterday indicated, too.
Leading the way was this time around in Android activations was the Samsung Galaxy SII, which had 4.6% of the total, and ranked as the fifth most popular device in the enterprise. Behind it was the Droid Razr (3.2%), and both it and the SII beat out the older Apple models of the iPhone 3GS and original iPad, now seventh and eighth, respectively, down from fifth and sixth last quarter.
The top devices, in order, were the iPhone 4S, the iPad (the newest iPad, which Good incorrectly refers to as the iPad 3), iPhone 4, iPad 2, the Galaxy S II, Droid Razr, iPad (original), iPhone 3GS, Samsung Galaxy Nexus, and Samsung Galaxy Note. Yep, the phablet made a showing.
In terms of tablet adoption, it’s no surprise to see the iPad in the lead, accounting for a whopping 94.5% of tablet activations. Android tablets, however, made a small gain – reaching 5.5% of total tablet activations, up from .07% last quarter.
And here’s a surprise: Windows Phone even hit the charts this time around. While only accounting for 1.2% of overall activations, Good says that number may grow as the rollut of Windows 8 gets underway and more Windows Phone devices hit the market.
As for who’s using all these devices, Good found the Financial Services industry to still lead with device activations up to 37.8% from 26.1% in Q1. The most notable shifts it found, however, were a big drop in deployments in Business & Professional Services industries, and an increase in use in the Government/Public Sector (up from 5% to 8%).
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Cleeng Play now lets you monetize your Vimeo content
Cleeng now lets you monetize the videos you host on your Vimeo Pro account, the company announced today on its blog while introducing this new product, known as Cleeng Play. In practice, it means that you can charge a fee to let users watch your content.
According to Cleeng’s co-founder and VP Operations, Donald Res, the process is very simple. All you have to do is to login or register on Cleeng Play’s dedicated page and link in to your new video account – either Vimeo Pro or Brightcove Express. You can then pick the video you want to put up for sale, and adjust your settings.
The site also recommends you to update your privacy settings on Vimeo and hide it from the video platform, where it would otherwise remain accessible for free. On the other hand, Cleeng lets you charge a fee from the videos you embed on your own website, as you can see in this example:
As you may remember, we recently listed Cleeng as one of seven lesser-known ways to make money from your content online. As we reported, the site and its plugins let you make money from all types of digital content – not only video, but also text and pictures. Yet, videos are the most lucrative type of media, Cleeng reports:
“Reaching the milestone of serving 2000 customers now, we have gained insights into what sells over the internet and what doesn’t. Believe it or not, videos account for over 13% of our total items sold but is a whopping 78% of our total revenue generated. While most articles are sold between $0.5 and $2, premium videos can garner from $4.99 to $19.99, and these prices can climb even higher if the content is unique and dedicated to enthusiastic fans.”
➤ Cleeng Play (Beta)
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Getting Rich By The Numbers, A CrunchBased How-To
Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post from Sameer Al-Sakran. Al-Sakran is a data scientist and machine learning specialist who was formerly the engineering manager at Imeem.
Hey kid, wanna get rich?
After watching “The Social Network” for the third time this weekend, are you feeling ready to create something truly world-changing and make a billion dollars? Have you just finished off an MBA and are looking for a job slightly more glamorous than traveling 364 days a year for a Big 3 consulting firm? Are you getting hit up for co-founder gigs in between gigs making web pages for dentists and want to know what white-hot area you should get into, if you did decide to live the dream?
We’ll you’re in luck. We’ve gone through CrunchBase (which is basically a National Treasure, or at least a treasure trove of data), and tallied up how well various company categories have done over the years.
IPOs
If you have your heart set on a public offering, get into chips. Semiconductors that is. A full 8% of these types of hardware companies in CrunchBase ended up in IPO.
But, if you don’t know a transistor from a Macbook charger, maybe try drugs? Biotech companies were second with a good 5% IPOing. If you’re set on a software company, the common dictum is to stick to the Enterprise side of the equation; 2% of Enterprise software companies we’ve been tracking have IPOed — as opposed to under 1% of general software companies and even fewer web companies.
Acquisition Happy?
Maybe Sarbox has you scared and you just want a big check and a shiny new business card at an acquisitive giant conglomerate.
Semiconductors (20%), Security (14%) and Biotech (12%) companies led the way there. Just be careful … for every massive Instagram acquisition, many others were soft landings or acquihires. It might be rough going from ruling your own (small kingdom) to filling out TPS reports.
Total funding:
If you’re up on your self-improvement seminars and realize that the process is more important than the goal (or you just want to raise a bunch of money and have U2 play your launch party) then you can also raise funding. The average amounts of total financing raised by capital-intensive Cleantech, Biotech and Semiconductor companies were 25M, 15M and 14M respectively.
TechCrunch Coverage
Not into the whole material riches or success thing? Want to be famous but can’t hold a tune and have horrible hand-eye coordination? Well, if you want to make TechCrunch, you might want to start one of those web companies. Not shockingly, Web, Mobile and Gaming were the sectors most likely to be covered on TechCrunch with 14, 12 and 11% of CrunchBase companies getting at least one mention. At the bottom of the list was Biotech, with less than half a percent of Biotech startups getting any coverage.
The Losers
Which categories should you avoid? Consulting has only had 3% of companies started that end up acquired and less than 0.5% IPOs. And well, for all the current hullabaloo, Education has had 0 IPOs and a 1% acquisition rate. And in last place, Legal companies have also had 0 IPOs and a sub 1% acquisition rate, though the recent filing of LegalZoom should change that dire statistic.
* Caveats: All numbers are based on CrunchBase and are backwards looking. Also, there is a fair bit of survivor bias in the results, in that successful companies are more likely to be in the database.
Want the full gory details in Table-format? Well here you go:
| Category | Started | Funded | Total Raised | TC Posts | Acquisitions | IPOs | % on TC | % IPOd | % Acquired | % Funded | Avg Funding |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Advertising | 3972 | 631 | $8.2B | 996 | 221 | 15 | 6.39 | 0.38 | 5.56 | 15.89 | $2M |
| Biotech | 2787 | 1770 | $42.4B | 43 | 332 | 143 | 0.43 | 5.13 | 11.91 | 63.51 | $15.2M |
| Cleantech | 1302 | 719 | $32.8B | 192 | 72 | 39 | 5.53 | 3 | 5.53 | 55.22 | $25.2M |
| Consulting | 3330 | 176 | $2.0B | 444 | 107 | 15 | 1.26 | 0.45 | 3.21 | 5.29 | $600k |
| Ecommerce | 5383 | 868 | $10.1B | 1587 | 188 | 16 | 5.67 | 0.3 | 3.49 | 16.12 | $1.9M |
| Education | 522 | 60 | $483M | 90 | 4 | 1 | 3.64 | 0.19 | 0.77 | 11.49 | $925k |
| Enterprise | 2389 | 652 | $9.9B | 993 | 257 | 41 | 9.29 | 1.72 | 10.76 | 27.29 | $4.1M |
| Games video | 3992 | 910 | $15.7B | 3625 | 285 | 30 | 10.65 | 0.75 | 7.14 | 22.8 | $3.9M |
| Hardware | 1726 | 613 | $11.9B | 3274 | 139 | 81 | 6.03 | 4.69 | 8.05 | 35.52 | $6.9M |
| Legal | 306 | 23 | $104M | 16 | 2 | 0 | 1.31 | 0 | 0.65 | 7.52 | $340k |
| Mobile | 4101 | 1099 | $20.1B | 4263 | 275 | 34 | 12.66 | 0.83 | 6.71 | 26.8 | $4.9M |
| Network hosting | 1782 | 340 | $7.9B | 1375 | 154 | 22 | 7.46 | 1.23 | 8.64 | 19.08 | $4.4M |
| Other | 33068 | 2022 | $24.1B | 2501 | 2325 | 101 | 2.46 | 0.31 | 7.03 | 6.11 | $730k |
| Public relations | 2531 | 468 | $6.9B | 765 | 171 | 32 | 4.74 | 1.26 | 6.76 | 18.49 | $2.7M |
| Search | 1437 | 226 | $2.7B | 4625 | 57 | 4 | 9.81 | 0.28 | 3.97 | 15.73 | $1.8M |
| Security | 710 | 218 | $4.1B | 135 | 96 | 12 | 6.76 | 1.69 | 13.52 | 30.7 | $5.8M |
| Semiconductor | 620 | 381 | $9.2B | 27 | 119 | 51 | 2.74 | 8.23 | 19.19 | 61.45 | $14.9M |
| Software | 12405 | 3039 | $33.1B | 3733 | 1101 | 110 | 4.89 | 0.89 | 8.88 | 24.5 | $2.6M |
| Web | 12830 | 2401 | $29.2B | 14356 | 827 | 57 | 13.59 | 0.44 | 6.45 | 18.71 | $2.3M |
Photo: Erik Dreyer/Getty Images
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Nokia Reports Q2 2012 Results: $9.2B In Net Sales, Operating Loss Nearly Doubles To $1.1B
Nokia has just released its fiscal Q2 2012 financials. It’s reported €7.5 billion ($9.2 billion) in net sales, a slight increase from the €7.4 billion last quarter but a 19 percent drop on a year ago. Lumia sales are up to 4 million, and basic devices were also up to 73 million units. But it’s being done at a great cost: net sales are down by five percent, and the operating loss is almost twice the value it was last quarter: €826 million ($1.01 billion) compared to €487 million a year ago. Earnings per share are at -$0.09, failing to meet analyst guidance.
Analysts expected the company to report a loss per share of between $0.10 and $0.11, a drop of nearly 220 percent on the same quarter a year ago. Revenue estimates were $7.3 billion for the quarter, down slightly from the $7.4 billion reported for last quarter.
It’s disappointing, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise. In June, Nokia had issued an update on its guidance for the quarter to revise down expectations. It said it expected higher restructuring charges — €1.9 billion for the next two years — along with unprofitability in the devices unit with operating margins at more than negative three percent (before it had been a straight negative three percent).
Here are some of the numbers in today’s earnings:
Smartphones: Four million Lumia phones sold, in line with estimates. Overall 10.2 million devices sold, meaning that even now Symbian is still outselling the new Lumia range built on Microsoft’s Windows Phone. The total number sold is a decline both on last year (down 39 percent) and the last quarter (down 14 percent). The average selling price on the devices is up by a bit and is now at €151 ($185) but gross margins are getting hit hard: they are now just at 1.7 percent compared to 15.6 percent last quarter and 23 percent a year ago.
Net sales for devices — $5 billion in total — are down by 26 percent on last year, but interestingly the U.S., where it only sold 600,000 devices in the quarter, is the only market where they have increased in the last year:
Feature phones, meanwhile, led by Nokia’s Asha range, the company has managed to hold up numbers much better. Its total sales there, $2.8 billion, is only down one percent on last year, and volumes have grown by two percent to 73.5 billion units.
Operating margins for the devices and services is now at -9.1 percent.
The company’s gross cash position is now at €9.4 billion ($11.5 billion) and net cash is at €4.2 billion (5.1 billion). The company is thought to be sitting on patents worth some 6 billion and may look to sell some of those to shore up its position going ahead through what look to be ongoing tough times.
Looking ahead, in Q3, Nokia says that it expects operating margin to be the same as it is in Q2, “plus or minus four percentage points.” In what Nokia says will be a “challenging quarter” for smartphones “due to product transitions,” it cites ongoing competition in smartphones (namely Android and Apple very much dominating the landscape at the moment); consumer demand for Lumia products not strong enough and the general macroeconomic environment.
For a slightly heartbreaking backstory on a company that might have been looking to innovate too much before its time, and too slow to move with changes in the industry, check out this feature in the WSJ.
We’ll be covering the analyst call at 8am Eastern and will post highlights from that as it happens.
Continued here: Nokia Reports Q2 2012 Results: $9.2B In Net Sales, Operating Loss Nearly Doubles To $1.1B