Whatever happened to the class of W11? — YC a decade+ later.
Hearing from a friend who just got into YC W22, I found myself in a reflective mood. I decided to finish a post I’ve been working on for some time about the batch I was in W11 and what ultimately became of the amazing group of people I was a part of.
To the class of W11, here’s what we’ve all been up to.
And, to the class of S22, this is what you might be able to look forward to and why it’s great to form lasting friendships and relationships with your batchmates.
To set the stage, the W11 batch got together prior to Coinbase (S12), Instacart (S12), and DoorDash (S13). At the time, the biggest exit in YC history was Heroku ($212 MM) — I remember that because it was the first time Y Combinator had a steak dinner for our batch. When I applied to YC, a criticism I’d hear from VCs was that the program had never produced a unicorn — AirBnB, Dropbox, and other YC companies were evidently growing fast. However, when I applied to the program in late 2010, none of these companies had earned unicorn status. Yet.
At the time, YC typically funded companies $11K and $3K per founder. Today, YC boasts over 60 unicorns and funds $500K for each company.
My batch was an especially well-documented batch, since a Wired Magazine was present at all times. There are some great photos to look back at, but I sought out more information than just those photos. I sought to find out exactly what each W11 company was up to today, in 2022. Here’s what I found.
By the numbers, of the 45 companies in W11, only one (~2%) is a unicorn today — GOAT.
Fourteen companies were acquired (~31%): HelloSign by Dropbox, Hotspots by Twitter, TalkBin by Google, Apportable by Google, OrderAhead by Square, Earbits by You42, MailGun by Rackspace, HumbleBundle by IGN, Upverter by Altium, Custora by Amperity, Comprehend by Saama, Lanyrd by Eventbrite, Fivestars by SumUp, and DrChrono by EverCommerce. Based on my findings, roughly eight of these companies are worth over $100MM (~17%) today.
Three of the batch founders were YC partners — Qasar Younis, Aaron Harris, and Eric Migicovsky. Four of us became VCs — myself (Michael Ma of Liquid 2 Ventures), Josh Buckley of Hyper and Buckley Ventures, and Matt Huang of Paradigm and Sequoia, Jonathan Hines at Web Investment Networks.
Interestingly enough, the founders of various companies in YC W11 went on to start more unicorn companies than existed outside of the batch itself. These entrepreneurs included Prasanna of Assembled, who also founded Rippling ($6.5B), and Qasar of TalkBin, who also founded Applied Intuition ($3.6B).
Without further ado, here is a breakdown of the W11 batch today.
Acunote: Despite only raising a seed round Acunote is still around today. Gleb and Alexander founded Acunute in 2011, but both of them have since left the company. Gleb went on to start another company in the healthcare space, and Alexander went on to work at Pinterest.
AppHarbor: This company still exists but only one of the three founders is still working on it actively. The rest of the founders went on to work in senior roles at Salesforce.
Apportable: The company has raised ~$10MM since inception and was acqui-hired by Google in 2015.
Assembled/Likealittle: Assembled, known as “Likealittle” in our batch, raised a Series A from a16z during YC — an incredibly rare feat at the time. They were very early in the social local space and obtained massive engagement with college students. However, quite like YikYak, that engagement dropped drastically, forcing the company to pivot twice before ultimately shutting down.
Balanced: These were the go-to-finance experts in our batch. The company raised a pretty large seed round for 2011, but ultimately shut down due to tough competition in the payment company space. Founder Matin went on to start another Fintech company while Mahmoud went on to start Very Good Security, which has raised over $100MM and is on track to become, if not already, a unicorn.
Beetailer: Laura’s company helped build software for Facebook stores when Facebook was just emerging as a platform. To my knowledge, this company ultimately shut down.
Close.io: One of the few companies that are still going strong with all founders still involved. The founders were some of the best sales folks I’ve met and it’s not surprising that Close.io continues to thrive. They continue to be one of the best CRM for sales teams.
Comprehend: Comprehend was one of three companies in our batch to take investment from Sequoia Capital and went on to raise $50MM total. Rick was one of the top healthcare experts in our batch. The company was ultimately acquired by Saama, though the financial terms are not disclosed.
Convore: Founders Leah, Eric F , Eric M were already fairly well known before coming into the batch, Leah for her work at Dropbox and Eric Florenzano for his work as a programming instructor. I remember one batchmate actually learned programming by watching some of Eric’s videos. Convore was a Slack and Teams competitor, and it was the one app everyone in the batch actively used. It was a beautifully designed app that was ahead of its time in many ways. However, Convore never gained enough users and ultimate shut down. Leah went on to start another YC company — Breaker, which she sold to Twitter — and the two Eric’s went on to start Clutch, which was later acquired by Twitter.
Custora: John and Corey were the founders of Custora, which was the top marketing analytics startup for years. Unicorn company Amperity ultimately acquired Custora in 2019.
DrChrono: DrChrono was recently acquired by the publicly-traded company EverCommerce. The founders here are really the experts when it comes to healthcare EHR software. They are #235 on YC top companies list, which means the company was likely acquired for >$100MM.
Earbits: Earbits was working in the music industry and raised a seed round but found themselves in a cash crunch. You42 ultimately stepped up to acquire the company.
FitFu: Fitfu was among the most visually stunning apps in the entire batch. However, it struggled in the already-busy fitness space and ultimately shut down.
FiveStars: Some of the most pedigreed founders in the batch; the founders at FiveStars were a full ex-McKinsey team. They are among the few companies in the batch that raised over $100MM, then ultimately sold FiveStars SumUp for $317MM, making them the biggest exit in the batch.
Flotype: This team consisted of some of the most technical founders in the entire batch. Though Flotype ultimately shut down, founder Darshan went on to found BigScreen VR, one of the top VR companies.
GOAT/Grubwithus (Unicorn!): Eddy and Daishin were considered some of the hardest working founders in our batch. And, to this day, I think they had one of the best YC interview stories I’ve ever heard. Though GOAT is incredibly well known today, at the time the company was known as Grubwithus and failed. But Eddy and Diasin persevered. The duo moved to LA, pivoting for years before starting GOAT. If any W11 founders truly embody resilience it’s the two of them. Worth $3.7B today, this is the biggest success in our batch. Today, GOAT is #30 on the YC top companies list.
HelloSign/Hellofax (Sold to Dropbox) — Joseph Walla and Neal were among the nicest founders in our batch. The company sold to Dropbox in 2019 for $230MM, which is the second biggest exit of the batch and puts them #209 on YC top companies list.
Hotspots/Moki.tv: This company was called Moki.tv in our batch and then pivoted to Hotspots before being acquired by Twitter. While the company itself is not very well known, one of the founders, Matt Huang, went on to join Sequoia and become one of the most famous crypto investors in the world and the founder of Paradigm.
HumbleBundle (Sold to IGN): The indie gaming darling of the batch. Humble Bundle got some of the biggest investor interest in the batch, before raising a large seed round and ultimately selling to IGN.
Hyperink: Hyperink was an eBook publisher. It ultimately shut down, though I honestly haven’t tracked it enough over the years to know why.
Inporia: I’m 90% sure this team joined late during the batch, because I barely remember specifics aside from the company being involved in fashion. Based on my research, the company ultimately shut down but the founders went on to do some amazing things.
Insight Data Science: Jake Klamka and Wil Chung ended up being two of my closest friends in the batch. After YC finished I moved in with them and personally invested in Insight Data Science during my venture career. However, the company struggled during COVID and ultimately shut down. Wil ended up as the first engineer at Pulley and Jake is starting another company.
Instapainting /Like.fm: Chris Chen was the founder of Like.fm during the batch. Chris and Josh were the youngest founders in the batch and I remember thinking how young they looked and that, although I was young myself, I felt behind. Like.fm had some great numbers but was ultimately not a very sustainable business. Like.fm ultimately pivoted to become Instapainting, a company still active today.
Lanyrd: The one-liner for Lanyrd was that they were the IMBD of events. The founders were incredibly friendly, and sold their company to Eventbrite.
Mailgun: Ev and Taylor founded Mailgun, one of the best email API products at the time. The pair ultimately sold the company to Rackspace. Their second company, Teleport, went through YC again in 2015 and has since become one of the top enterprise companies, raising over $50MM.
Mino Games: Josh Buckley was the youngest founder in the batch. The company he started, Mino Games raised from a16z, raised a total of over $30MM, and is still alive and porftiable. Since starting Mino Games, Josh has gone on to become an amazing angel investor, CEO of ProductHunt and founder of Hyper.
Orderahead: Jeff Byun, Henry and Ruddick were the founders of Orderahead. Jeff was considered to be the best at pitching/sales in the batch. He pivoted two weeks before demo day and still managed to give one of the best demo day pitches among the entire batch. Orderahead was ultimately acquired by Square, and Jeff and Henry are at it again with a new startup.
Pebble: Pebble didn’t get a lot of love from investors on YC demo day because it was the only hardware startup in the batch. They then launched on Kickstarter and raised the world record largest Kickstarter ever of over $10MM. After that, investors started pursuing Pebble and they raised over $60MM. However, hardware is never easy and with the release of the Apple watch the company faced pressure from multiple angels and ultimately shut down. Eric, the founder, went on to become a YC partner before founding Beeper. Eric has become famous as the go-to person for advice on hardware startups or launching a Kickstarter.
Sendoid: Sendoid was designed for large file transfers in the enterprise world. The demo was great, and the company was ultimately sold to Facebook. Senoid founders went on to lead the Facebook at Work product before starting a new company, Kintaba. in 2020.
Siasto: Nick and Courtland were working on a company called Taskforce during the YC batch, though somewhere along the line it pivoted to Siasto and ultimately shutdown. Courtland went on to start Indie Hacker, which was later acquired by Stripe.
Simplylisted: Simplylisted was an easy tool to put your item to sell listings anywhere. It seemed like a clever idea but ultimately shut down sometime in the last eleven years.
Singlestore/Memsql: Originally called MemSql, this company was consistently ranked among the top 10 in internal straw polls within the batch. It rebranded to Singlestore a few years back and is currently #123 on the most valuable YC companies list. Of the two founders, Nikita is still at Singlestore while Eric went on to start another company in the FinTech space.
Storyworth: Still around after 11 years, I recently saw some of their Instagram ads. Despite having not raised a ton of money, I think Storyworth remains profitable and doing well. I recently saw one of their Instagram ads, and was reminded there are so many businesses that are profitable and alive after only one round of financing.
Talkable: Talkable is a referral software solution. The company remains active, though most of the founders have gone on to do various other things including Allan Grant, who co-founded Hired.
TalkBin: This is my startup! We were a business messaging company. At the time, we were the fastest exit in YC and ultimately sold to Google. The other founders and myself spent a few years at Google as well. The CEO of the company, Qasar Younis, became a YC partner/COO before starting Applied Intuition, worth $3.6B today. The CTO, Sunny, stayed at Google and is now the Engingeering lead of all of Desktop Search. I personally left Google to attend Harvard Business School and then started a Venture Capital — Liquid 2 Ventures.
TellFi: TellFi was a Google voice competitor. The company ultimately shut down, but the founders went on to start another business. Founder Jason went through YC again in S19 with his new company Safely Finance.
Tremendous: Tremendous was a company that worked with payments and gift cards. Edited (I wasn’t quite sure what the company was up to but got an email from the founder on their amazing journey here — https://www.tremendous.com/company-history) Kapil and Nick are still working on the company that profitable and never raised a VC round, and may be one of top 3 most valuable companies in the batch. Jonathan went on to be a VC at Web Investment Network.
Trustegg: Trustegg was a trust fund startup; the company shut down a few years back.
Tumult: Tumult never raised any money and even returned back the Start Fund money to maintain independence. The product is still being used by large amount of graphic designers.
Tutorspree: Tutorspree was a tutoring marketplace company. Aaron Harris, CEO of the company, was considered one of the best at fundraising advice in the entire batch. Although the company ultimately shut down due to Google ranking changes, Aaron went on to become a YC partner and started the YC Series A program. Ryan, another founder, went on to go through YC again in in W17, with Rankscience, which is one of the top SEO software’s out there today.
Upverter: Upverter was a design software for circuit boards. I haven’t kept up with the founders well enough to know where they are today, but Upverter was acquired by Altium in 2017.
Userfox/Vimessa: This company was known as Vimessa in the batch, then pivoted to Userfox which then shut down a few years ago.
Venuetastic: Venuetastic was the only all-female founding team of the batch. The company ultimately shut down, Lena ended up at a senior role at GoodRX and Christine started Honeycomb, an observability company that’s raised over $80MM to date.
You Got Listings: Still active after 11 years, the company helped real estate brokers. Today, You Got Listings is still serving the same demographic, but has remained at the early stage and never took off to a greater population.
ZeroCater: ZeroCater hit over $100MM in GMV off of $1.5MM raised. Soon after, they raised $12MM series A. Though the founder left and is no longer actively managing the company, the new CEO has done an incredible job at ZeroCater. The company was hit hard by COVID, but managed to survive and is now thriving again. The new CEO is among one of my closest friends now! Eleven years later, I still remember their demo day pitch because it ended on this slide below and something about surfing on a wave of food to success.
A number of my batchmates became some of my closest friends and I lived with Qasar Younis, Wil Chung, Jof Arnold, and Jake Klamka as roommates at various points in my life. Five batchmates have invested in me at various points in my life and I’ve had the privilege of investing in five other batchmates myself.
What surprised me most when conducting research for this post was the number of companies from batch W11 that are worth over $100MM. It was also exciting to learn about what the founders went on to do after their initial YC companies. I found that roughly 25% of each startup had somebody now running a 100MM+ company, though many of these companies differ from those founded during YC, and this isn’t true for every founder just per each company.
YC was life-changing on both a financial and personal level for me. To the future batches, I hope you realize how special the other people in your batch are and take time to not only focus on your own company but on building relationships. I can tell you first-hand that the connections you make at YC can lead to life-long friendships with mutually driven, intelligent, and profound individuals.
