My draft Masters dissertation on YC and other “startup accelerators” | Hacker News

I haven't read it carefully, but I noticed a few mistakes. It's Y Combinator, not Y combinator. We started it in March 2005, not the summer. A lot more than 14% of the first 70 companies received follow-on funding; generally 2/3 or more do. Also, I think this: "While Paul Graham was influential through his essays, he is far more influential now that he runs the most high-profile accelerator programme in the world." is actually false. Writing is by its nature a more effective generator of fame than almost any other kind of work. It's unlikely that switching part of your time from writing to some other kind of work would increase your fame. And in fact I have independent corroboration of this. Before I started YC, my site was often the first Google search result for "graham" and sometimes even for "paul." It's nothing like that now.