Overview of the author

• Studied advertising and computer science at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, graduates in 2011
• Y Combinator alumni from the Summer 2009 batch; cofounded GraffitiGeo, which was later acquired by Loopt in 2009.
• First Silicon Valley experience was joining TokBox as employee #1 during sophomore year (2007). Later worked at One Llama and Illinois Ventures. Started 2 UIUC student entrepreneur groups: UBD (an ACM SIG) and IEN.
• Proud owner of github.com/god although unfortunately doesn’t possess any supernatural powers
• Enjoys designing and coding
• Total sucker for gaming (Protoss ftw). I’m a Huskateer.
• Favorite side project is Hacker News Directory, where students can find other students from their schools who read Hacker News.
• Maintains a personal blog at posterous
• Has an awesome girlfriend who is equally nerdy and sells handmade jewelry on Etsy.

Book stats overview

• 33 total companies interviewed
• Companies have collectively raised $90 million
• 60% of companies interviewed are funded by Y Combinator, which represents 8% of all Y Combinator companies as of 2011 (20 total)
• 63% founders are programmers (21)
• 30% of founders are tagged as ‘businessperson‘ meaning they most likely aren’t programmers or writing code
• 18% of founders are designers (6)
• 18% of companies are acquired, or founders have had previously acquired companies before their current startup (6)
• 24% of founders worked jobs to generate income while they were in school (8)
• 45% of founders started their startups as undergraduate students
• 67% of companies are hiring (22)
• 21% of founders are dropouts (7)
• 42% of founders are profitable, either Ramen profitable or profitable enough to pay salaries and cover business expenses (14)
• 76% of founders are funded, either VC funded or received funding from angels (Y Combinator seed funding is not counted in this figure) (25)
• 6% of founders attended an Ivy League school (2)
• 27% of founders are major league players, so most of them are within the top 1,000 ranked sites by traffic in the U.S. according to Alexa (9)
• 24% of founders were coincidental, meaning they had no idea they would be starting a startup (9)
• Only 2 founders are solo founders