The 24 Best Y Combinator Companies of All Time

Some of these started as a two-person batch project and now trade on public exchanges; others were sold or quietly faded after their peak. Which alumni actually earned the hype?

1. 1
   Airbnb

   Home-sharing marketplace that went through Y Combinator in Winter 2009 and listed on Nasdaq in December 2020.
   1000pts
2. 2
   Stripe

   Online payments company founded by brothers Patrick and John Collison, part of Y Combinator's Summer 2009 batch.
   714pts
3. 3
   Razorpay

   Indian online payments gateway founded by Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar, a YC Winter 2015 company.
   550pts
4. 4
   Rappi

   Colombian on-demand delivery app from YC's Winter 2016 batch that became Colombia's first tech unicorn in 2018.
   494pts
5. 5
   Reddit

   Social news and discussion site founded in 2005 by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian in Y Combinator's first batch; it listed on the NYSE in 2024.
   494pts
6. 6
   Gusto

   Payroll and HR software for small businesses, launched as ZenPayroll in YC's Winter 2012 batch.
   494pts
7. 7
   Coinbase

   Cryptocurrency exchange co-founded by Brian Armstrong, a YC Summer 2012 company that went public through a direct listing in April 2021.
   494pts
8. 8
   Instacart

   Grocery delivery service founded by Apoorva Mehta, a YC Summer 2012 company that went public on Nasdaq in September 2023.
   428pts
9. 9
   Flexport

   Digital freight forwarder and logistics platform founded by Ryan Petersen, a YC Winter 2014 company.
   428pts
10. 10
    Deel

    Global payroll and international hiring platform from YC's Winter 2019 batch, valued at $12 billion in 2022.
    428pts
11. 11
    PagerDuty

    Incident-response and on-call alerting platform from YC's Summer 2010 batch, listed on the NYSE in 2019.
    428pts
12. 12
    GitLab

    Git repository and DevOps platform that joined YC in Winter 2015 and went public on Nasdaq in October 2021.
    350pts
13. 13
    Heroku

    Cloud application platform from YC's Winter 2008 batch, bought by Salesforce in 2010 for $212 million.
    350pts
14. 14
    Brex

    Corporate card and spend-management company founded by Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi, YC Winter 2017.
    350pts
15. 15
    Twitch

    Live-streaming platform spun out of Justin.tv, a YC Winter 2007 startup, and bought by Amazon in 2014 for about $970 million.
    350pts
16. 16
    OpenSea

    NFT marketplace founded by Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah, a YC Winter 2018 company valued at $13.3 billion in January 2022.
    257pts
17. 17
    Scribd

    Document-sharing site from YC's Summer 2006 batch that grew into an ebook and audiobook subscription service.
    257pts
18. 18
    DoorDash

    Food delivery platform started by Stanford students that joined YC in Summer 2013 and listed on the NYSE in December 2020.
    257pts
19. 19
    Scale AI

    AI training-data company founded by Alexandr Wang and Lucy Guo in YC's Summer 2016 batch; Meta bought a 49% stake in 2025.
    257pts
20. 20
    Zapier

    Workflow automation tool that connects web apps so tasks run without code, a YC Summer 2012 company.
    257pts
21. 21
    Weebly

    Drag-and-drop website builder from YC's Winter 2007 batch, acquired by Square in 2018 for about $365 million.
    257pts
22. 22
    Dropbox

    Cloud file-storage service founded by Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi in YC's Summer 2007 batch, listed on Nasdaq in 2018.
    257pts
23. 23
    Docker

    Container software company that began as the platform-as-a-service startup dotCloud in YC's Summer 2010 batch.
    0pts
24. 24
    Ginkgo Bioworks

    Boston synthetic-biology company that was Y Combinator's first biotech investment, in the Summer 2014 batch.
    0pts

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