🔥 Issue #86: Claremont & Y Combinator Success
A look into the historical success that Claremont-founded startups have had going through Y Combinator
💬 Welcome to issue #86 of Between the Lines
Good morning & happy Thursday. Did you know that for the past eight years, at least three Claremont-founded startups have gone through Y Combinator every year? To date, YC has invested in and helped accelerate 40 different Claremont-founded startups.
This week, we take a closer look at the most successful Claremont-founded startups that have gone through YC….. It’s a Claremont world out there. 👇
~ Josh, Miles, & Pat
📊 6th Street Stats: Claremont + Y Combinator = Success
Authors: Josh Tatum & Miles Bird
Y Combinator has arguably been the most successful startup accelerator since it launched in March of 2005. Two decades since launching and YC has become a household name for founders and investors alike, and acceptance into the program has been an impressive achievement for founders that has provided a high signal for investors. Along with popularizing the startup accelerator model, YC’s investing and programming have been the industry’s gold standard. Not to mention, YC also invented and commercialized the use of SAFEs, which is now commonly used throughout early-stage investing as the first money in.
Since starting, Y Combinator has been used to launch more than 3,000 companies, including top-decile, generational companies like Airbnb, Coinbase, DoorDash, Reddit, and Cruise — which Claremont alumnus Dan Kan founded. Unsurprisingly, Cruise is not the only Claremont-founded startup in which YC has noticed and invested. Over the past twenty years, YC has been one of the most prevalent investors in Claremont-founded startups, investing in and helping accelerate 40 different Claremont-founded startups to date.
These 40 companies have collectively raised over $16B in funding, and ten of them have already exited for over $4.3B in combined exit dollars — nine acquisitions and one IPO. Even more impressive is that these ten companies, on average, had their exits within under four years after incorporation.
Y Combinator, however, was not the only investor who took notice of these Claremont companies. 80% of the 36 companies also raised from top institutional investors other than YC. Felicis Ventures, Initialized Capital, Founders Fund, Greylock, First Round Capital, SV Angels, and Gaingels were some of the main co-investors in these companies, and they all invested in at least two or more of these Claremont/YC companies.
More exits and impressive outcomes are also on the horizon, as 38 of the 40 companies were founded and went through YC in just the last decade.
On average, 3+ Claremont-founded startups a year are getting accepted into YC and going through their programming. Furthermore, each vintage year from 20011–2016 for Claremont/YC companies averaged 1.3 exits.
Twenty-six of the forty Claremont startups that have graduated from YC remain private with a combined estimated private valuation of over $760M. Six of these private companies also currently hold private valuations of over $50M each.
Below are just a few of the most successful Claremont-founded startups that have gone through Y Combinator:
Matterport — a 3D media platform developer used to establish 3D and virtual reality models co-founded by Claremont alumnus Michael Beebe. In 2021, Matterport IPO’d with a valuation of ~$2.9B.
Cruise — an autonomous vehicle company co-founded by Claremont alumnus Dan Kan. In 2016, Cruise was acquired by GM for ~$1.2B.
Medumo — a healthcare startup helping healthcare organizations deliver patient information using automated SMS and email co-founded by Claremont alumnus Jacob Cohen. The business was acquired by Phillips Healthcare in 2019.
TapEngage — a startup that enables advertisers and publishers to collaborate on tablet-optimized advertising co-founded by Claremont alumnus Matt Holden. The business was acquired by Dropbox in 2013.
Kinside — a child care marketplace powered by employers co-founded by former unicorn entrepreneur and Claremont alumnus Shadiah Sigala. Earlier this year, Kinside raised a $12M Series A led by Wellington Management.
Tydo — an analytics platform for eCommerce brands co-founded by Claremont alumnus Manav Kohli and Scott Sonneborn. Last year Tydo raised a Series A from Greylock Partners and Rogue Capital.
Living Carbon — a climate change biotech company genetically enhancing CO2 capture and storage in trees co-founded by Claremont alumnus Maddie Hall. Living Carbon has raised over $40M from Felicis Ventures and Temasek Ventures.
54Gene — a healthcare startup that offers a genetics testing platform co-founded by Claremont alumnus Abasi Ene-Obong. The company has raised over $90M in funding, including a $25M Series B last year led by Cathay Innovation.
Coursedog — an edtech company providing curriculum and schedule planning solutions for Higher Education co-founded by Claremont transfer Nicholas Diao. Last year Coursedog raised a $17M Series A led by Coatue and First Round Capital.
Just for fun, we also did some analysis on the ROI for these companies, and if you blindly invested a check into every one of these Claremont/YC startups, you wouldn’t have been disappointed.
Assuming you wrote an early check into all 40 companies on an average of a $7.5M Post-Money Valuation and had a ~60% dilution in your ownership by the time of exit, you would’ve had a ~6x return on investment according to known distributions from these exits. This is also on the conservative side, as a few of the exits went for unknown amounts. Furthermore, you would also currently be sitting with a ~1.5 MOIC in portfolio value for the still private companies.
The verdict is out, and it’s SAFE to say that Claremont + YC = Success.
🤝 Pardon the Introduction: Tauroi Technologies
Avi Thaker (HMC '16) is a machine learning expert who has successfully built cutting-edge unsupervised learning language processing models and applied ML to novel drug discovery, among many other interesting AI/ML projects. Daniel Sonner (HMC '18) is a world champion bridge player and a software engineer with a background in writing concurrent and reliable code. Daniel and Avi met at HMC's Investment Fund and traded for about 7 years in addition to their other pursuits before founding Tauroi Technologies - a hedge fund that applies AI/ML to alternative data to trade markets.
Since their recent interview with BTL, Tauroi Technologies has seen significant growth and doubled its fund size. The company has been actively ingesting new data sources, including collecting hard-to-obtain data based on its own trading. Their multi-algo strategy recently outperformed the market by 7.34%, highlighting the company's strong performance. Additionally, Tauroi Technologies' low-vol fund strategy saw a 4.23% net return, even in volatile market conditions. The fund has continued to demonstrate its investment expertise and engineering excellence.
If you’re curious to know more or just want to discuss hedge funds, algorithmic trading, or alternative data, message Daniel and Avi!
💼 Who’s Hiring?: CoRise & Frame Fertility
Claremont grad Julia Stiglitz (PO) is the co-founder and CEO of CoRise – a new learning platform where anyone can learn the most in-demand skills in today’s job market. CoRise partners with industry leaders to transform how professionals and companies build technical, high-demand skills at scale. They were also recently listed by Business Insider as one of the 23 most promising edtech startups in 2022. Julia is currently building the founding team for CoRise, and she’s hiring for several positions:
Claremont graduate Corey van der Wal (PO '07) is the co-founder and CPO of Frame Fertility – the first and only evidence-based platform that enables the early identification of fertility risk, leading to better fertility and overall health. Developed with clinical experts, Frame’s approach alleviates a costly downstream fertility crisis for patients. The company was inspired by the challenging fertility journey of its wife/husband co-founders and digital health experts, Jessica and Corey. Last year, they announced a $2.8M Seed round led by Looking Glass Capital. They’re hiring multiple roles for their founding team:
Check out the other ~5,000 open jobs at 400+ Claremont-affiliated companies here on our Storyboard. Plus, create a profile and enter your preferences to get alerted to new job postings relevant to you, be they the 1,000+ remote jobs, 100+ internships, or 40+ part-time positions available. We’ve published research that shows that Claremont-founded companies that disproportionately hire Claremont talent outperform — so pay attention, Claremonsters!
If any of these roles catch your eye 👀 , apply and mention Between the Lines. Or, if you are an employer looking to hire tip-top Claremont talent, fill out this form to have your jobs featured.
🗣️ Conversations on the Interwebz:
This week’s top read 🔥
With the new GPT4 having launched, Claremont grad Lily Clifford (PZ ‘14) led a discussion on the differences between large text models and large speech models and shared her analysis of LLMs. Lily is the Founder and CEO of Rime Labs – an all-in-one solution for enterprise-level speech tasks and ultra-customizable speech synthesis.
This week’s top listen 🎧
A huge congratulations to Reality Defender and Claremont graduate Ben Colman (CMC) for winning this year’s SXSW Pitch Awards. Reality Defender detects manipulated content in real-time to help enterprise and government clients effectively combat synthetically altered images, videos, audio phone calls, and documents. Ben was also recently on the RANE Insights podcast to discuss the creation of deepfakes and the implications of this rapidly evolving technology.
Can’t get enough of Between the Lines? Follow and connect with us on Twitter!
🍽️ BTL Snacks:
🕚 What It Takes To Understand Crypto….. The technology behind crypto is constantly evolving and changing, making it difficult to always stay on top of all the new developments. Claremont entrepreneur Michael Arrington (CMC) shares the story of how his interest in crypto evolved into a full-blown obsession and his insights on why it will take years for even the smartest people to gain a full understanding of this technology. Michael is the founder of TechCrunch, CrunchBase, and Arrington Capital – a multi-strategy hedge fund specializing in early-stage vc and the public markets.
⚡Supercharge Your Student Portfolio….. Claremont grad and serial entrepreneur Peter Thum (CMC ‘90) shares the perfect solution for college students to highlight their accomplishments, projects, work experience, and talents for FREE. He is the co-founder and CEO of Muse – a no-code website builder that uses easy drag-and-drop blocks to build your own page. Peter mentioned that students at NYU, Boston College, Claremont McKenna, and Harvey Mudd are already using the platform to help them get internships and jobs in fields from hard sciences to finance and consulting to the arts. If you’re a staff at a University Career Center, contact Muse at iris@muse.io.
We’ve tracked 26 Claremont-founded startups that have reached Unicorn status, including Cruise, LaunchDarkly, Matterport, and GitHub. Twenty-five of these 26 reached unicorn status within just the last decade.
Feedback? We love to hear it. Hit us with an email. 👊🏼