Meet the YC Summer 2022 Batch

by Michael Seibel9/7/2022

For the first time since the Winter 2020 batch, the Summer 2022 batch was in person. The batch kicked off with an in-person retreat followed by weekly meetups in San Francisco and around the world. And soon after Demo Day, we’re hosting an end-of-batch celebration with the entire YC community.

The program was still remote friendly with office hours and batch talks online, but we encouraged all teams who could to move to the Bay Area to participate. About 30% of the batch moved to the Bay Area during the 3-month program, and about 23% were already in the Bay Area when they applied to YC.  

For the Summer 2022 batch, we received 19,000 applications from founders around the world and funded 240. Today, these founders will present their companies to an invite-only audience of investors at our 35th Demo Day. Here’s what we saw in the S22 batch:

  • 50% of the batch applied more than once
  • 43% of the batch were accepted with only an idea
  • 36% of the batch raised money before YC
  • 71% of the batch had zero revenue before YC
  • 7% had more than $50k of monthly revenue when accepted

S22 companies are building in more than 100 verticals. There isn’t an industry being touched by software that we don’t fund. During the batch, we divide the companies into 33 small groups that are organized by vertical. The groups meet for bi-weekly office hours led by 18 group partners and visiting group partners. During these group office hours, founders help each other and get the benefit of an intimate setting within the larger batch. At a high level:

  • 39% in B2B/Enterprise SaaS
  • 21% in Fintech
  • 13% in DevTools
  • 9% in Consumer
  • 9% in Healthcare
  • 3% in Proptech
  • 3% in Aerospace
  • 2% in Climate, Energy, or Sustainability
  • 1% in Education

The companies come from 34 countries around the world that combined have over 3 billion inhabitants. About 42% are outside of the U.S. – and a sign of the times, 35% of the companies are remote and 37% are remote friendly. The top countries represented include:

New this batch, we added “multiracial” as an option when collecting demographic information. While this change makes it harder for us to measure our progress compared to prior batches, this addition was long overdue. Here is the demographic breakdown for the S22 batch:

  • 13% Asian
  • 3% Black
  • 6% Hispanic or Latino
  • 5% Middle Eastern or North African
  • 8% Multiracial
  • 15% South Asian
  • 29% White

Additionally, 15% of the companies have a woman founder and 9% of the founders are women.

Author

  • Michael Seibel

    Michael Seibel is a Group Partner and Managing Director, Early Stage at YC. He was the cofounder and CEO Justin.tv and Socialcam. Socialcam sold to Autodesk in 2012 and Justin.tv became Twitch.