Is Y Combinator a School?

Yes, Here’s 3 Reasons Why

What is Y Combinator? If you ask anyone in the bay area that, they’ll likely call it an accelerator for startups who want to reach a billion-dollar valuation. Some may still call it an incubator. Others could refer to it as a VC firm. After doing some digging, there isn’t actually an agreed-upon word that describes, that YC itself aligns with. So I’m going to propose a new one; Y Combinator is a 21st-century school, just no one realizes it yet.

There are multiple forces at play here, so I’m going to break each one down to back up my argument that YC is more of a school than an accelerator. Bur first, what is a school in this context?

What is a school?

If you Google “school”, you’ll see this as one of the top definitions:

The definition focuses on the education side, but thanks to the internet, there are millions of schools now. Under this definition, Youtube is a school, as is Udemy and Teachable. I don’t think these companies are equivalent to a Stanford or Yale, so I’ll tack one more definition to the word.