For the Winter 2023 batch, we received over 20,000 applications from founders around the world and funded 282. Smart founders know now is a great time to start a startup.

Today, these founders will present their companies to an invite-only audience of investors at our 36th Demo Day. Here’s what we saw in the W23 batch:

• 59% of the batch applied more than once
• 52% of the batch were accepted with only an idea
• 28% of the batch raised money before YC
• 77% of the batch had zero revenue before YC
• 2% had more than $50k of monthly revenue when accepted

86% of W23 founders lived in the Bay Area. The batch kicked off with an in-person retreat, followed by weekly meetups in San Francisco. Though most founders spent the batch in the Bay Area, the program was still remote friendly, with batch talks and office hours hosted online.

YC Winter 2023's 282 companies were divided into sections of 7-10 companies, which were led by 19 group partners and visiting group partners and organized by vertical.

The most common themes of this batch were open source, dev tools, and AI, and company verticals broke down as follows:

• 54% in B2B/Enterprise SaaS
• 17% in DevTools
• 12% in Fintech
• 7% in Healthcare
• 5% in Consumer
• 3% in Proptech
• 2% in Climate, Energy, or Sustainability
• 1% in Aerospace

Here is the demographic breakdown* for the W23 batch:

• 13% Asian
• 2% Black
• 5% Hispanic or Latino
• 3% Middle Eastern or North African
• 8% Multiracial
• 15% South Asian
• 29% White

Additionally, 17% of the companies have a woman founder and 8% of the founders are women.