This post was originally published on The Macro and is reprinted with permission. You can read the original here.
Reading applications to Y Combinator is like having access to a crystal ball.
Twice per year — once in the winter and once in the spring — thousands of men and women apply to Y Combinator. Each of these bright minds has his or her own vision of the future of technology. They pitch ideas related to Bitcoin, drones, new drugs, virtual reality, and nearly every other topic you could imagine.
Since 2008, we’ve received tens of thousands of these applications. Collectively, they provide insights into the ideas smart people are working on and how it’s changed over time. We’ve never talked about these publicly before.
But recently, we commissioned Priceonomics (YC W12) and their data studio to analyze eight years’ worth of our anonymized application data. After breaking the applications down into keywords, they calculated the percentage of applicants that mentioned any given term.
So let’s review the data, starting with a simple example.
There’s a question on the Y Combinator application “Who are your competitors? Who are you most afraid of?”. Looking at the answers to this question, we can see what companies founders have on their minds.
When Twitter was new and rapidly growing in 2010, there were many startups doing Twitter-like apps and tools for Twitter users, who were appropriately concerned that Twitter might compete with them. Very few applications mention Microsoft – Paul Graham has written about why that may be before.
Some startups are now making the top lists of competitors too. Uber and Airbnb are more than halfway to Google by number of mentions.
Other companies have completely dropped off the grid. Remember MySpace?
The rest of these graphs are based on the answer to the question “What is your company going to make?”. Let’s look at what this can tell about the platform shift from websites to apps.
While the trend in this graph is old news, it’s not obvious that it would take until 2016 for apps to overtake websites.
Within mobile devices, the iPad was mentioned specifically very often after it first came out. Now it’s mentioned rarely—probably not because people don’t build apps for iPads anymore, but instead because it’s simply so obvious that you will support iPads that people don’t even mention it. Interest in the Kindle was never very strong.
In the early days of Y Combinator, founders often pitched free and ad-supported business models. Throughout the startup world, that business model has become less common, replaced with companies charging customers directly. We always suspected this, and you can see it in this graph.
The term “SaaS” (Software-as-a-Service, aka, people pay for it) has increased in usage by 400% since 2008, while “Advertising” has decreased by more than 60%.
Startups related to blogging used to be very fashionable — many applications suggested tools for bloggers, better blogging sites, or search engines for blogs. This space is no longer popular.
There are still a lot of ideas aimed at improving or disrupting email, but not as many as there used to be. Messaging is now more popular.
Buried in the above chart is the exploding popularity of the messaging service, Slack.
Let’s take a closer look at Slack’s ascension by comparing it to the number of applications that mention other popular enterprise terms like “GitHub” and “Docker”:
Many startups believe that Slack has created an unmatched distribution opportunity. The interest in Slack-related concepts, mostly bots and concierge services, has exploded in the last year.
Next, let’s take a look at how has Bitcoin fared over the years.
Bitcoin-related ideas were briefly very popular, but fell off rapidly. These days, building things on top of the underlying blockchain is on the rise, and seems set to surpass bitcoin itself.
Hardware and biotech are all increasingly popular. Some of this reflects changes in the mix of startups applying to Y Combinator. Y Combinator originally focused on software companies but in the last few years has expanded to fund companies in every space. The rest of it reflects the overall hardware renaissance, and the surge of interest in biotech now that lab work is so much more accessible to startups.
Within hardware, smartwatches and other wearables remain popular, though they have plateaued now.
Other hardware items have not fared as well. Mentions of tablets and e-readers have sharply declined in YC applications in recent years.
Not surprisingly, VR is hot and getting hotter. We recently tweeted a call for more VR applications and got a great response.
But the biggest trend in the last couple of batches has been the surge in interest in applying AI to everything. Even these graphs understate the extent to which AI is now playing a role in many companies’ ideas.
To conclude, we’ve compiled many of the more popular terms mentioned in this post on one table, where you can compare them with one another. This list ranks terms by the percentage of applications that mention them. All companies mentioned have been highlighted in orange for reference.
Though on the decline, Facebook (4.2%) and Google (4%) are still the most-cited companies in YC applications. Newcomers — particularly Uber (2.6%) and Airbnb (2.1%), and Slack (1.1%) — are rapidly on the rise.
What this table doesn’t show us is which terms are on the rise or declining. So lastly, we’ve broken down the technologies and companies that are losing favor with applicants, as well as those which are ascending the fastest. We limited this list to terms that were mentioned in at least 0.5% of all 2016 applications (and rounded each figure to the nearest tenth of a percent).
As we touched on, the term Bitcoin has not fared well in YC application mentions over the past year — to the tune of a 61% decline in mentions. Also of note, Bluetooth, Crowdfunding, and Websites are in similar decline.
Of every term we included in this article, one stood far above the rest in terms of popularity: Slack. Over the past year, the company has experienced an 850% increase in YC application mentions.
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Transitioning to a scale-up is proving difficult for startups within Canada’s tech ecosystem. There are many questions about how to better support startups in order to maintain competitiveness and longevity. The transition can be so difficult that Patrick Horgan, VP, Manufacturing, Development & Operations at IBM Canada refers to it as the ‘Valley of Death’.
Bridges are being built over the Valley, though. Initiatives like IBM’s Bluemix Garage – which provides technology support, shares growth experience, and offers mentorship – aims to foster scale up success in the long-run.
To learn more about the challenges startups face in scaling up, and about initiatives that offer support, watch this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGVlvcO3pn0
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TechPORTFOLIO interviewed investors, financiers, and academics and asked them what they look for in early stage startups – and how they define success. Here are their answers.
It’s sales and growth. But also the product
Chris Arsenault, managing partner at iNovia Capital, says that the most successful companies he has backed early-on have made sales and growth a priority: “It’s often easier for a startup to be 100% focused on the product, while sales take a back seat.” One of the biggest barriers facing startups is lack of sales-focused management teams, he says.
However, he stresses, the product roadmap needs to incorporate upgrades and new features according to customer needs. The best practice is to find your customers and then develop your product in the early stages with their feedback.
“You can fill faster and iterate better by leveraging customers early in the startup process,” says Dr. Sean Wise, Associate Professor, Entrepreneurship, Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University.
It’s the journey. But also the destination
“Success for me is not necessarily the same as what an entrepreneur defines as success,” says Matt Roberts, associate director at the IT Venture Fund at Business Development Bank of Canada. His aim is to build all the internal processes to allow the company to grow up and then get it set up to access series A funding.
“I want my companies to have the wherewithal to attract other outside capital, to continue to grow, and execute on the business,” he says.
Michelle McBane, investment director at MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund, agrees. When the companies leave the stage of working on their key product and customers “then our companies are graduated, so that means they’ve passed the baton to the series A/B investors. That’s success for us.”
Your team, and the people around your team
“Diversity helps ensure there are different perspectives around the table, driving better decision making that will ultimately lead to better long term performance,” says Will Hutchins, Managing Director of Espresso Capital. “I believe this is true at all stages of a company’s growth–from startups to mature companies.”
“Startups have more needs than they have resources. Leveraging your community allows you to leverage what little resources you have,” says Dr. Sean Wise. A dense community offers cheaper and easier talent acquisition and, of course, more investors.
Startup founders need to think about funding options at all stages of growth. What kind of funding is available – or not – at which stages? We talked to investors, tech community leaders, and founders about the challenges attracting startup investment, cultural fit, and how some have negotiated funding issues.
While everyone we spoke to said there are challenges getting funding, there’s little consensus on where exactly those holes are – or how they should be filled.
There are still gaps in the ecosystem. The gaps have narrowed significantly over the past five years but they’re still there. So it’s incredibly difficult for startups to find the first $500K or $1 million of investment.
There’s a reason for that. A lot of what we would call super angels are small seed funds. After they’ve done one seed fund they want to raise another seed fund. And they want it to be a little bit bigger, so they can get bigger fees and get a better paycheque. Because of that they can’t do the number of deals they were going to do before. They need bigger cheque sizes so they need to do bigger deals, and they move themselves out of the early seed market.
There’s a bunch of us in mid- to late-seed, and companies post-revenue, who do deals there. But there’s not a heck of a lot of companies that do early seed.
Traditionally there’s been a perception that there’s a gap in what we call late series B, maybe series C investments, the $100m+ valuation. I’d say that’s not as pronounced as it was two or three years ago.
I think we’re seeing entrepreneurs consider the benefits of bootstrapping based on their business model. Given the time and effort it takes to secure funding, a startup could lose its competitive advantage by seeking venture capital.
We’re also seeing companies use government grants, accelerators, tax credits, and other monetary and non-monetary resources to reduce their burn rate.
It is always a better idea to bootstrap. However if you’re going to raise initial funding the best thing you can do is do it through crowdsourcing. By crowdfunding your venture not only do you save equity but you gain access to early adopters.
The right companies are getting funded. Will I say that they’re getting funded as highly as they should? No. They’re always undercapitalized versus our US counterparts.
A similar company in the US would raise one to two to three times more than a company at this stage would. They’d likely get a higher valuation, which mean they could get a bit more money in. The bigger issue is that we’ve chronically underfunded our companies.
Funding is challenging in Canada. There’s a government funding crunch – it’s not as abundant as in the US.
It’s a lot easier to get seed funding. There’s definitely a series A crunch. There aren’t that many funds able to hand out that capital. Post series A there’s almost nothing in Canada unless you’re going private equity or public.
There’s a trend to alternative financing. Business Development Bank of Canada are creating some interesting structures. Business are forced to be creative because of the funding structures here.
Canada’s technology sector has long suffered from chronic underfunding with the vast majority of early-stage companies relying on modest sums from friends, family and angel investors, or bootstrapping growth. But not all companies are fully aware of their funding options.
Our firm seeks to provide alternative sources of capital – in the form of debt financing – to support early and growth stage companies to achieve their growth objectives. It’s important that companies assess all potential funding sources – equity and debt – in developing their funding strategies.
The funding cycles for tech companies across Canada have positively evolved over the last decade but still do not meet the startup to growth funding needs. To create a strong innovation ecosystem we need to be able to provide support, financial or otherwise, for startups and incentivize investment at all levels of their companies’ lifecycle. And we are not there yet–there is still a general lack of later-stage funding for Canadian tech companies.
We have upped the bar at the angel and early-stage funding levels, but when it comes to raising Series B round funding and upward to support growth for example, Canadian tech companies are still raising most of their capital from the USA. Canadian investors are missing out on generating returns by not backing the next generation of large high growth tech companies in their own backyard.
We will be that much more successful once we close this full-cycle funding gap.
We’ve all invested our own money. We are now at series A financing but we have a reverse takeover structure to become a public company in Canada. We feel that the markets are the most efficient space to value your company–not by some mechanism that obfuscates financials.
We went to the small VC companies in Canada and it just wasn’t a fit. I’ve been in the global capital markets for 20 years, and if there isn’t a fit with the shareholders, it’s not going to work.
[Investors] in the very early stages are no more than a bunch of people that are retired and have invested $10-30,000. The last thing I want is to talk to is some retiree every single day because they invested in 4D Virtual Space.
“Whenever a market or a technology changes, thereʼs a huge opportunity for new businesses,” author and entrepreneur Seth Godin said in The Bootstrapper’s Bible.
Godin’s comment from more than a decade ago, which addresses what’s now generally referred to as “disruption,” resonates among entrepreneurs more than ever. To address this, we asked each of our launch week interviewees what technology is going to be the most bankable in the next few years? Here’s a selection of their answers.
Artificial Intelligence
“We’re at that tipping point,” says Sonia Strimban, Manager of Venture Operations at MarS Discovery District. Artificial intelligence is already ubiquitous and will grow. “That tech is coming exponentially. Deep learning is really accelerating the pace of applications, not just the core but the application layer of what AI can do.”
“There’s a lot of public misconceptions. There’s already so much AI that some people don’t realize,” she says. Films such as Spike Jonze’s Her, for example, might talk about AI, but don’t really represent its real-life use.
Michelle McBane, director of the Investment Accelerator Fund, which is based at MaRS, noted that some entrepreneurs are deliberately adding machine learning to their startups to get noticed.
Virtual Reality
Matt Roberts, associate director at the IT Venture Fund at BDC Capital, says VR is worth watching in the longer term. “Everybody’s gotten a bit of a hype cycle going for it. We’re really going to start seeing excitement around VR in the next 2 to 3 years.”
“It’ll be like the Wii was for a generation,” he added. “A complete change of how people interact with technology.”
Self-driving cars
Bill Jacobson, founder and CEO of Boston-area startup space Workbar, says self-driving cars and the effect they have on transportation will be profound. “I have kids and I feel like they’re likely not going to own a car,” he says.
The technology could be coming a lot more quickly than we think, Jacobson added. “From a safety standpoint we’re in this middle ground where we have a driver that is highly distracted behind the wheel… that’s likely more dangerous than handing over control to a computer.”
Amir Azhari, president of AOMS – a Waterloo, Ontario-based fiber optic solutions startup, also identified self-driving cars. Azhari said AI’s rapid development is linked to autonomous vehicles’ success and regulations will catch up, even though “there are now just regulations and government laws that limit accessibility.”
To scale a tech startup, companies need to manage a complex set of variables: Finding product-market fit, getting funded, finding customers, hiring, being better than the competition, and a slew of little things in between that need to be managed to keep a company out of the deadpool.
To determine what’s currently on the minds of Canadian tech entrepreneurs, we looked at conversation and social media activity around one of the county’s most established tech publications, Techvibes.
A close look at the social media data shows employment (“help” & “hiring”) and funding (“million”) conversations standing out prominently.
Jobs/Talent
Techvibes hosts a semi-annual event called Techfest, which underscores the importance of hiring. The networking event attracts more than 1,000 attendees and culminates in a series of 2-minute pitches by CEOs, founders and tech executives meant to attract the best employees.
Accelerators can put startups on a fast track towards growth-stage success, but founders shouldn’t be tempted to apply to a program simply on the basis of acceptance chances. Geography, funding, office space, and mentorship availability are all important, and there are still other factors to keep in mind.
We asked interviewees during our launch week about what’s most crucial for startup founders considering accelerators.
“It is very important to get the right accelerator based on the product that you have,” says Amir Azhari, President and COO of AOMS Technologies, a startup focused on fibre optic sensors for extreme environments such as oil and natural gas wells. The first accelerator he tried, which focused on software and app development, wasn’t meeting his needs.
Azhari joined the RIC Centre, in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, which he says worked better because of its manufacturing focus.“[They] introduced us to different potential investors who might be interested in our technology,” he says.
Sonia Strimban, Manager of Venture Operations at the MaRS Discovery District in Toronto, adds that accelerators help avoid isolation. “There’s a compounding network effect. If you’re not part, you’re missing out in introductions and meetings with potential investors. You have to be part of the community to receive the exponential effects of the momentum.”
Matt Roberts, associate director at the Business Development Bank of Canada’s IT Venture Fund, agrees that accelerators provide an important role, particularly with filling missing skills in your initial team. “They’re more often than not providing advice and feedback to allow founders to do some of that early sales and marketing themselves, or giving them advice and connections to make the first hires they need.”
But perhaps the best value you can get out of an accelerator is working with those already established. According to Strimban: “Founders like to learn from each other. There’s an element of trust they have with other entrepreneurs… It’s invaluable knowledge that will save you so much time and effort if you can benefit from the experience of others.”
“Venture capital matters” dominate the Montreal tech startup scene, according to what the data shows around Twitter discussion from Canada’s second largest city:
Montreal is home to some of Canada’s largest VC firms, including Real Ventures, Rho Canada, BDC Capital and iNovia Capital. The city also made Compass’ list of top startup ecosystems globally:
Montreal, ranked at number 20 in Compass’ 2015 Global Startup Ecosystem Ranking https://t.co/fBURm4I5vd
After funding, physical accommodation for startup activity shows up prominently in the Montreal social media discussion in the last 90 days. Notman House – a startup campus providing office, event, and communal space for entrepreneurs, investors, technology partners and community groups – has attracted 3.3 million Twitter impressions from nearly 1,000 mentions in the last 3 months.
Notman House aims to contribute to Montreal’s startup ecosystem by “producing companies that contribute to the social, economic and cultural fabric of [Montreal] while shaping the future of our global society,” according to the organization’s website.
Opportunities to work at, or with, Notman House drive the social media discussion:
Notman House has a very international view to its place in the world, saying its vision is “predicated on the beliefs that not only do startups make cities great, but that great cities need great startups.”
Want a look inside Notman House? Here’s a 3D tour:
In addition to Notman driving Twitter discussion around the Montreal tech #startup scene, is one person: Sylvain Carle, a Partner at Real Ventures and General Manager of FounderFuel.
Known as “@froginthevalley” on Twitter, Carle has proven to be both a supporter of Notman House, and a driving force of Twitter discussion in Montreal recently.
Pushed by surging demand for tap-and-go everything, banks are embracing fintech startups as channels to innovation instead of engaging in an all-out war to shut them down. This race for fintech solutions doesn’t stop at specific partnerships; it’s leading to fintech ecosystems.
Bill Jacobson, CEO and Founder of Workbar, a coworking network across the Greater Boston area, has created a relationship with Digital Credit Union, one of the largest credit unions in the US. They have a space that hosts fintech companies for six months.
The arrangement is a quid pro quo.
“The [startups] get to work with DCU and see real problems. It’s a great way for them to develop beta customers, accelerate the effort to work on real issues. It gives them space and access to the Digital Credit Union management team as well,” Jacobson says. Meanwhile, Digital Credit Union is “doing this to get closer to startups and new ideas..”
The fintech division of Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District – a startup incubator – is another example of the cooperation growing between banks and startups.
“There’s not necessarily a threat, or friend-or-foe sort of mentality” among banks sponsoring programs at MaRS, says Adam Nanjee, head of MaRS’s fintech division. “They want to work with the startups.”
Financial institutions are wrestling with the competitive implications of fintech. The PwC report says 20% of their business is at risk by 2020, so many are already partnering with more nimble, innovative startups. Funding of fintech startups last year reached $12.2 billion.
Gregory Melchior, a startup co-founder who previously worked at Bank of Montreal and Merrill Lynch, says: “If you’re standalone you’re not going to survive. You need to have a white-labeled solution and work with the banks.”
Startups have ended the industrial era and have become the net job creators in many major markets across the globe.
To follow this disruptive change, /newsrooms has launched TechPORTFOLIO, a social media-driven destination that covers the economic value and financial benefit of startup ecosystems as they emerge locally, nationally and internationally.
“TechPORTFOLIO will explore the most important transformations impacting technology, business and economic growth,” says Robert Delaney, VP Managing Editor, TechPORTFOLIO. “We’re researching and writing about many layers of the ecosystems. TechPORTFOLIO will compare and contrast geographies, approaches, companies, and investment trends in order to understand and evaluate how startup ecosystems are changing.”
TechPORTFOLIO combines journalistic coverage and data analysis to profile startups, entrepreneurs, investors, academia and governments shaping startup ecosystems.
TechPORTFOLIO will use IBM Cloud and cognitive technologies, including data and machine learning, as part of its journalistic approach to deliver insights relevant to the companies, startups and governments involved in the global startup ecosystem.
“IBM Cloud is the leading platform for data-driven cloud and analytics that enables organizations to meet market demands and open doors to more responsive and innovative ways of doing business,”says Nevil Knupp, VP of Cloud, IBM Canada. “By providing the best cloud and cognitive technologies, we are helping TechPORTFOLIO connect to the developer and startup audience and transform the way news is delivered.”
“The Canadian startup space is thriving and supporting a culture of innovation with organizations, like TechPORTFOLIO, allows IBM to contribute to a thriving tech environment that can strengthen Canada’s position as an ideal place to research and develop new technologies,” says Lila Adamec, Program Director, Developer Ecosystem & Startups, IBM Canada.
“TechPORTFOLIO will be a new kind of publication that incorporates data, social media and technology into its operating model and ongoing publishing,” says Leigh Doyle, Managing Editor, TechPORTFOLIO. “Editorial instinct and subject matter expertise will take us a long way in our analysis and storytelling around tech and startup ecosystems. When we combine those with our data and social media expertise, we’re able to go deep into subjects in ways that were not possible before. That’s exciting.”
About TechPORTFOLIO:
TechPORTFOLIO covers the economic value and financial benefit of startup ecosystems as they emerge locally, nationally, and internationally. TechPORTFOLIO combines journalistic coverage, data analysis, and profiles startups, entrepreneurs, investors, academia and governments shaping startup ecosystems. The site is available at https://techportfolio.net/
TechPORTFOLIO is owned and published by /newsrooms, a network dedicated to providing continuous content marketing and social media coverage for brands. Our managing editors, writers, correspondents, creative producers and analysts draw from the insights and experience of the world’s best newsrooms to deliver content and coverage across a wide range of industry categories.
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Startup entrepreneurs know going it alone is seldom a good idea. But a senior “team” with only one kind of speciality – be it engineering or product development – can be equally as difficult.
Sonia Strimban, manager of venture operations at Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District – an accelerator, said one of her first interventions when a company joins is to make sure the right blend of leadership is at the top.
“You absolutely need a team,” Strimban says. “Nobody is going to give you money for an overdeveloped product without a business model.”
Strimban adds that it’s important to plan your leadership team for growth at different stages.
“At series A, typically, we see the most benefit in an executive in sales and marketing. If you’re not selling and you can’t accelerate growth, you’re pretty much toast. [You need] somebody who has revenue growth capability.”
Other investors concur about the risks inherent in single-person or unbalanced startups.
David Cohen, a co-founder and managing partner at Techstars Ventures, said in a 2007 blog post that he won’t rule out sole entrepreneurs, but holds them at a disadvantage. “Look for someone who compliments your skills,” Cohen said. “If you’re great at coding, find someone who’s great at selling or marketing.”
Cohen’s investment instincts proved astute as Techstars became an early investor in Uber just two years later.
Location is a Factor
Location can also often become a factor in finding the right senior team lineup.
“The U.S. definitely has many layers of experience of people in robust urban areas,” explains Gregory Melchior, Founder/CEO of startup 4D Virtual Space.
Some areas such as Greater Boston or Silicon Valley have a wider spread of skills at founder level. “There seems to be a correlation between the top universities – institutions have a ripple effect – that allows for a robust labour force,” Melchior adds.
However, finding co-leadership you can trust is now almost as easy as swiping right. Sites such as FounderDating aim to bridge the leadership gap by connecting leaders with different and complementary skills.
And true to their word, these platforms screen applicants so their base doesn’t get top-heavy with engineers.
Artificial reality is making waves throughout the tech industry, and Magic Leap has made one of the biggest splashes in terms of financing. The company has secured what may be the largest C-round in history: $793.5 million.
Fort Lauderdale, FL-based Magic Leap will need to spend wisely to compete with the tech giants of the west coast and Asia.
A recent profile of Magic Leap in Wired noted that “Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Sony, Samsung—have whole groups dedicated to artificial reality, and they’re hiring more engineers daily. Facebook alone has over 400 people working on VR.”
By 2020, the augmented and virtual reality markets are expected to be worth about $150 billion. This is creating hardware and software development opportunities for startups in just about every industry and facet of life, from film to education to day-to-day office administration.
But the potential applications could spill over combine with other emerging technologies. As we enter virtual worlds, the demand for IoT devices and smart-connected spaces could increase. The combination of virtual space and IoT tools has the potential to revolutionize industries such as skilled trades, healthcare, and tourism.
As startups plan for the future, it is worth considering if virtual reality will disrupt their business and how technologies like Magic Leap might impact them. Until Magic Leap unveils what it’s hiding, the true extent of its impact can’t be measured, but until then, it doesn’t hurt to imagine.
The ups and downs of unicorn valuations have dominated the Twitter conversation around tech for much of the past year, both in Canada and elsewhere. How does Canada differentiate itself when referring to startups valued at $1 billion or more?
The mighty narwhal.
While this carnivorous whale – distinguished by its single tusk – is an actual creature as opposed to a mythical one, try to find someone who’s seen a narwhal in the flesh. The animal’s scarcity makes it an appropriate metaphor.
There have been more than 1.8 million impressions from 175 mentions by 124 users between October 31 and April 30. Here’s what the conversation looks like:
Unicorns haven’t been completely sidelined in Canada, though. The unicorn conversation often includes talk of venture capital. One example is this tweet from Startup Canada, which appears in the Twitter conversation:
VCs are not only talking about the industry on podcasts. Another story that bubbled up in the Twitter conversation was this PE Hub Network’s article on 2016 predictions for Canadian tech startups and venture capital.
Editor’s Note: This piece was re-printed from a LinkedIn Pulse item with permission from the writer, Jeff Booth, who is Co-Founder, President and CEO of BuildDirect.
Earlier this year, Microsoft added its fourth development office to downtown Vancouver, joining a who’s who of U.S. tech names that have set up shop in Vancouver in recent years, including Amazon.com, Salesforce.com and Facebook.
It’s tempting to say the city is blossoming into Silicon Valley North but, to truly earn that title, Vancouver — or any other Canadian city for that matter — must build its own ecosystem of successful, home-grown tech companies. In fact, we’ll know Vancouver has made it when tech companies from here are setting up outposts in other places.
Of late, it’s become fashionable to point out all the reasons this will never happen. Canadian tech naysayers point to troubles finding experienced senior management, a shortage of funding and a university system not pumping out enough research and engineering talent as reasons Canada will never compete with hubs like California and Washington. Some of those critiques are valid, but do they predict the future or do they just describe the present?
Early on when building BuildDirect, I was asked to sit on a Conference Board of Canada roundtable on boosting tech innovation, comprised of leaders in industry, academia and government. Although the group was set up to help Canada win, the discussion always felt like an endless circle of laments: why entrepreneurs sell out too early, why Canada doesn’t celebrate our successes, etc. What frustrated me most was it seemed everyone got it backwards.
It’s the entrepreneur who starts the whole cycle by having a vision bigger than himself and carrying it out. That act, the vision of a different future, is what creates the value that attracts the rest of the ecosystem.
The reality is these are early days for aspiring technology centres like Vancouver, Toronto or Waterloo. It’s easy to look to established ecosystems and see countless shortcomings in comparison: there isn’t a giant anchor company like Google to spin off ideas and talent; soaring housing prices and border bureaucracy sway top talent from moving; start-up capital can be in short supply.
But that’s a near-sighted approach. Looking at the bigger picture, Vancouver and other Canadian cities hold enormous promise and advantages even Silicon Valley didn’t have in its infancy. We should be looking to leverage those advantages instead of wallowing in our shortcomings. The more apt comparison for Vancouver isn’t the Seattle or Northern California hubs of today, but where those centres were at their beginnings.
From Prunes to Electronics
A century ago, the Santa Clara Valley’s export specialty was a plum variety that could be processed into prunes. In fact, it wasn’t until 1971 when the Silicon Valley moniker was first used. The area’s technology industry began with World War II-era government investment into radar and electronics research at Stanford University. More government money flowed throughout the Cold War to the Valley and to Massachusetts’ Route 128, fostering the growth of now-famous companies like Hewlett-Packard and Xerox PARC. Seattle’s smaller hub was built around companies like Boeing.
Often overlooked is the fact that Silicon Valley’s tech sector didn’t overtake Massachusetts in profits and innovation until the 1980s — proving that a smaller, weaker player can grow and win. Even then its economic output was a fraction of what it is now. It’s easy to see the economic powerhouse that Silicon Valley has become, but it’s worth remembering the long road it took to get there and the many failed companies it left along the way. The vibrant ecosystem we see now is a byproduct of those struggles.
It’s also important to point out the role that determined, focused individuals played in these early histories, when success was anything but a surefire bet. Silicon Valley literally began in a Palo Alto garage rented by Stanford University graduates Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, who started the Hewlett-Packard Company in 1939 with $538 in working capital and a used Sears Craftsman drill press.
Elon Musk, Stewart Butterfield
Canada does not lack people with great ideas and grand vision. It’s often overlooked that one of the most esteemed innovators of the 21st century, Elon Musk – the mind behind PayPal, SpaceX and Tesla – is a Canadian citizen and attended Queen’s University in Kingston before ultimately moving to the U.S. Vancouverite Stewart Butterfield created the original photo-sharing site Flickr in the mid 2000s and went on to build the office social platform Slack, now headquartered in San Francisco and valued around $4 billion.
At the same time, dedicated entrepreneurs can achieve great success within Vancouver’s ecosystem, and help the ecosystem as a whole flourish. This is the difficult path that Silicon Valley’s founders took, and that local companies like D-Wave Systems, Hootsuite, Shoes.com, Mobify and my own company are committed to taking. We might have reached a steeper growth trajectory by moving to the U.S., but wanted to build something great here.
Yes, there’s room for improvement on a variety of fronts north of the border. We need to ramp up investments in education, loosen red tape for importing talent and build up our funding infrastructure. But true entrepreneurs see opportunities where others see problems. They go where everybody isn’t.
In that sense, there are more opportunities in Vancouver in 2016 than in the Silicon Valley of today, precisely because not everybody has seen them. Investment opportunities here are under-exploited compared to the sky-high valuations seen in more prominent centres, a fact that many of smartest (and best funded) VCs are clueing into, bringing new sources of funding to the city. Not all home-grown companies will succeed, but some will — and the payoff is going to be more than just money.
Self-sustaining Engine
We’ve seen that building a technology hub takes time, resources, and innovation, but those investments combine to create a self-sustaining engine for economic growth and advancement. The sum is far greater than the parts.
Vancouver is a young ecosystem, but it’s a closely knit community whose leaders reach out and support one another. It can achieve greatness if it holds to the kind of faith that built Silicon Valley from its humble start. And the same goes for Waterloo, Toronto and the other emerging and established tech hubs in Canada. The potential is, in fact, enormous, if we can see beyond the early hurdles.
There will always be shouts from the sidelines from people who say things can’t be done. But, to borrow a line from Teddy Roosevelt, the credit belongs with he who “spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.” This may seem melodramatic, but for entrepreneurs dedicated to building a tech ecosystem in Canada, business is truly more than just business. This is a project fueled as much by passion as by profit, and one that promises extraordinary things in the years ahead.
As a startup, your choice of programming language may not be top of mind for potential investors, but it can affect funding potential under some circumstances. We asked tech investors about factors to consider when making that choice.
For Federico Wengi, a venture capital associate with Paua Ventures in Berlin, startups should consider their comfort level with the language, where the market is going and if the language they choose is the best one to reach their goals. While VCs usually don’t try to change decisions around programming languages, the way programs are written could affect investment decisions.
“If we don’t like what we see in the tech [due diligence], we walk away,” Wengi said. “It is important that we can establish proof that the team has built a sustainable backbone of tech on top of which the first customers can be won.”
A CTO, for example, might be comfortable using Scala, and that language might also be suitable to reach the startup’s goals. “But once you scale who are you going to hire?” said Wengi. “According to GitHub, Scala is one of the least popular languages. On the other hand, if you are building a robotic prototype you have little use of a language like Java, regardless of the quantity of talent you might be able to acquire.”
For Leo Polovets, a partner at Susa Ventures and former software engineer at Google and LinkedIn, the programming language isn’t a factor for his fund unless the choice is clearly inappropriate. “If someone is trying to build cutting-edge deep learning APIs, then PHP is not the right language for that,” he said. “But PHP, while somewhat out of style, is perfectly fine for many other applications.”
The most popular programming languages for startups are Javascript, Ruby, Python and Java, according to Polovets’ analysis of AngelList data. He found that JavaScript is by far the dominant programming language choice for startups, followed by Ruby, Python and Java; Ruby on Rails is the top choice for front-end technology.
Polovets also correlates stronger startups with modern or functional programming languages, such as Go, Scala, Haskell, Erlang and Clojure. PHP, on the other hand, is on the decline, and several sites list developer pain points, such as PHPWTF and PHP Sadness.
Overall, though, VCs generally have no say over a startup’s tech stack, said Polovets. Most VCs are adept at evaluating founders, markets and business models, but don’t have the tech knowledge to recommend programming languages.
“Most investments happen after there’s already some code in place, or even a live product,” Polovets said, “Changing programming languages at that point would be a huge, unnecessary time sink.”
Startups understand survival of the fittest. But some might find themselves weeded out of the ecosystem faster than expected if artificial intelligence is deployed to evaluate them.
Recent advances in gaming and AI are adding another layer of complexity to an already competitive landscape in the form of “startup simulations.” As finance becomes more data-driven, simulations – which have been long been leveraged for gaming – serve a new purpose: determining whether or not a startup receives funding.
Business and economic simulations have been around since the 1990s, including well-known examples such asSIMS andCapitalism. In the past, these games catered to a leisure market, while simulations created for business applications have predominately served training and modelling purposes. Their potential now exceeds that.
Games have the ability to test a startup’s performance before it goes to market. Using real-world and real-time market and economic data, these simulations mimic the conditions a startup encounters at the time it seeks funding. Based on those conditions and predicted trends, VCs could watch the life-cycle of a startup play out within a game before deciding to invest.
Tweaking the parameters to resemble different geographic markets can help VCs gauge where and when a startup might achieve success, or if it will fail regardless of the circumstances. Armed with that information, the risk of investing in any given startup could be lowered.
The current approach to valuations includes basic tools such as formulas, calculators, and spreadsheets, all supported by a VC’s intuition. While these tools may never completely vanish as part of a VC’s due diligence, they lack the predictive capabilities and rich-picture approach a simulation can provide.
Simulations aren’t just theoretical, futuristic ideas.Growth Science, a data science firm founded by Thomas Thurston, already uses them.Thurston’s simulations, he claims, correctly predicted that Snapchat, Uber, and Airbnb would be big and that their accuracy when predicting whether or not a company will still exist in five years is 66 percent.
“Comparing our ‘quant’ [quantitative] approach to traditional VCs is like comparing a qualitative stock picker with an algorithmic hedge fund,” says Thurston. “Our process is mechanical. We use data, math and rules to try and isolate the specific percentage probabilities that any business will hit our goals as investors. We invest based on quantified probabilities, rather than intuition.”
The implications for startups are huge.
According to Thurston, Growth Science can “not only make probability-based predictions about whether a startup will succeed or not, but they also let us run ‘what if’ scenarios and to test-drive multiple strategies. This way, we not only know what’s likely given the startup’s current assumptions, but we can also identify trouble spots and help the startup course-correct to be more successful.”
Growth Science claims to draw on private and public databases across industries, and has “guided billions of dollars in organic growth, acquisitions and corporate venture capital.” according to the company’s website.
What further implications might the prevalence of startup simulations have?
Venture capitalists might require a successful simulation from a reputable source before confirming investment and releasing funds. Valuations could be determined entirely by algorithms within simulations.
A startup’s international viability could be tested in advance, and used to determine the strategy and suitability for expansion into one market over another.
The gaming industry might follow suit and develop nuanced, AI and data-driven games for corporate clients who want an edge in formulating strategies, creating processes, risk management, increasing motivation/engagement, driving customer engagement, and developing talent.
Predictive analytics: Games could be used to identify real-world gaps and market opportunities, informing which businesses and services need to be created next.
Startup simulations have a broad economic impact if they are robust, realistic, and accurate. As the use of simulations becomes more widespread, the concept has the potential to alter how businesses are established, and how they grow beyond the early stages.
Startup simulations might not just predict future outcomes — they’ll create them.
Some details for this article were provided through a research project done as part of OCAD University’s Masters of Design, Strategic Foresight and Innovation program.
Two straight quarters of declines in VC funding globally show how tech sector money has pulled away from growth-at-all-costs unicorns in favor of the slow-and-steady “cockroaches.”
Now that sobriety has set in, the tech world sees in hindsight how a nearly indestructible creature, able to live on dust, would be more attractive to investors than something that doesn’t exist – like profits among some of the most well-known tech plays of the past few years. Think Pinterest, Yelp, etc.
“We like businesses that are able to fuel their own growth,” said David Crow, a tech industry consultant and former OMERS Ventures Director. “The ones that are able to show strong unit economics, strong margins and strong customer growth.”
Leading the devaluation charge, Fidelity Investments wrote down unicorns including Dropbox and Cloudera, companies that had gorged on VC money for putting growth ahead of profitability.
To qualify as a unicorn, a private startup must have achieved $1 billion in pre-IPO funding. A cockroach, by contrast, is a business that builds slowly, focusing on the fundamentals, keeping a close eye on revenues and profits, and limiting spending on fixed assets so that it can withstand economic and competitive headwinds.Shopify, which took 11 years to get to unicorn status, is a classic example.
The pivot away from unicorns has been quick. According toKPMG, only 5 new VC-backed companies entered the unicorn club in the first quarter of this year – less than half that of any of the first three quarters in 2015. And not one VC-backed tech IPO made it to market. Aggregate VC activity fell to 1,829 deals, the lowest since Q2 2013. Total VC funding globally dropped 33 percent from a quarterly high of $39 billion in Q3 2015 to $25.5 billion in Q1 2016.
Sex in the Stairwells
Zenefits is emblematic of the trend. One of the fastest growing startups ever, the online insurance broker went from launch in 2013 to $583 million in funding and 500 employees by the beginning of 2015. By September that year head count had exploded to 1,600. The story of its decline – the parties, the power struggles, the flawed products and processes, the lack of legal compliance, the lies told to clients, the sex in the stairwells – is just waiting to be turned into a Netflix series.
By February 2016, Fidelity had marked down Zenefits by nearly two-thirds below what it paid for its stake in the company less than a year earlier.
VCs are looking at startups with more attention to business fundamentals than they did in theheady days of mid-2015. The difference between then and now is like the difference between New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and Oakland A’s manager Billy Beane.
In the late ‘90s, Steinbrenner had the financial clout to swing for the upper decks in pursuit of baseball’s biggest hitters. But the financially strapped Beane (whose story was the basis of the filmMoneyball) focused on signing lesser players with one thing in common: a high on-base percentage. The crew he assembled went on to win 20 straight games in their first season together. In the 2016 game of startup investing, investors are looking for Billy Beanes.
In the words of KPMG/CB Insights’Venture Plus Q1 2016, it’s the startups with positive margins, controlled expenses and a clear path to profitability that will get the funding. In other words, well-grounded, like cockroaches.
Andrew Light, Managing Partner for the Americas at Melbourne-based VC firm EatonSquare, echoes the sentiment. “For us it always comes down to people on the management team. Have they done this before? Did they have success? Is the business solid enough to inspire the confidence of investors? For a lot of venture capitalists, taking on early-stage stuff is too risky because if it doesn’t turn out it damages their reputation and makes it harder to sell the next bet.”
Cybersecurity
So where does one find these low-lying, long-lasting diamonds in the rough? One place where cockroaches seem to congregate is thecybersecurity space. Network and enterprise security providerPaloalto Networks took 7 years to get to IPO, while threat forensics and malware protection firm FireEye took 10 years.
Managed security services provider Trustwave, which was justacquired by Singtel, was founded in 1995. Trustwave launched its first managed security product in 2002 and spent the next 13 years slowly building out a global infrastructure of operations centers while growing its customer base.
Up and comers to watch in this space include smartphone security firmLookout and cloud-based network security service firmCloudflare.
It’s no surprise that many cockroaches are innovating in the cyber security space as opposed to social sharing or other areas that aren’t obvious bets when it comes to monetization. Global spending on information security is expected to more than double to $170 billion by 2020 from $75 billion in 2015, according to estimates compiled by Forbes.
Companies innovating successfully on expensive problems that require solutions as a legal imperative will have more luck getting funded than those coming up with gimmicks.
As Flickr founder Caterina Fake warns in her widely shared articleThe Age of the Cockroach: Companies that want to outlast the coming funding crisis will need to “plan for a future without much money in it.”
The University of Toronto and RBC recently announced ONRamp, an initiative that will include a startup incubator meant to help entrepreneurs network with investors and each other. ONRamp’s RBC Innovation Hub is the newest among many multilaterally funded programs meant to help startups in a city endowed with world-class academic and financial resources.
Toronto distinguishes itself as Canada’s financial center, the fourth-largest metropolis in North America, and its namesake university ranks in the world’s top-20. Toronto is also one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the world, a metric that McKinsey & Co. says supports corporate success.
So where are the Toronto-bred unicorns?
Ranked 17 in the 2015 Global Startup Ecosystem Report by Compass, Toronto has yet to produce a pre-IPO company valued at $1 billion or more. There’s no unicorn pasture in Toronto; it’s more of a “cockroach” nest. But given the shift away from frenzied VC funding of any startup that grew its user base, this might be a good thing.
Toronto’s Flixel exemplifies the cockroach, a moniker for startups that prioritize revenues over users when it comes to growth. Others include UberFlip and Wattpad. The city has also produced a number of reputable exits, including Kobo, which was bought by Japan’s Ratuken for $315 million, XE.com, and VerticalScope.
“It’s about shots on net, and muscling the good shots through i.e. you need a healthy number of seed/A stage companies, and when it comes to scaling you need growth capital,” says Kobo’s founder Michael Serbinis. “Toronto-Waterloo has the former now, but there are few funds here that can write big, later stage cheques.”
Serbinis currently serves as board director for the Toronto-based MaRS Discovery District, an innovation hub that connects startups with investors and corporations and is a founder of LEAGUE, a personal health management platform.
Endangered Species
If VC funding in the first quarter of 2016 is any indication of what’s in store for startups this year, unicorns are becoming an endangered species. KPMG’s latest Venture Pulse report noted that the first quarter of 2016 saw $25.5 billion invested across 1,829 deals, marking the second-straight quarter in which investors dialed back VC funding and activity.
Only 5 new unicorns were minted world-wide in the first quarter of 2016. By comparison, the fourth quarter of 2015 produced 13, while the second and third quarter each produced 25.
Mark Skapinker, co-founder and managing partner at Brightspark Ventures, says: “If you look at locations outside of Silicon Valley that have had huge successful companies, it is quite devastating to the surrounding market if they fail at a later stage [like] Nortel in Ottawa, Nokia in Sweden, Blackberry in Waterloo. So, having a unicorn is not always amazing for a city.”
The tougher funding environment will play to Canada’s strengths. The country’s banking system withstood the global financial crisis that began in 2008 while U.S. financial institutions went bust or survived on government support. However, the robust regulatory regime that kept Canada strong throughout the turmoil is a reflection of the conservatism that makes it difficult for all but the most self-sufficient startups – cockroaches, in other words – to get funded.
“Toronto does have a number of cockroach-type companies,” Skapinker said. “It is much harder to get funded in Toronto than somewhere like Silicon Valley and we have a [startup financing] infrastructure that is not very ‘robust’ so companies need to work much harder and be ready for hard times at every stage. That makes them ‘cockroach’ like.”
Canada’s Toronto-Kitchener-Waterloo corridor has the three key components of a strong startup ecosystem: entrepreneurs, academia, and investors. However, the last one lags relative to Silicon Valley and other top-ranked tech ecosystems.
Cities outside of the world’s largest VC concentrations need to innovate to create conduits that tap these hubs. The C100’sVenture North event in Toronto addresses this problem. TheC100 runs programs, including Venture North, which aim to do this by connecting Canadian entrepreneurs with compatriots active in Silicon Valley to foster partnership and investment.
Watch this for more details about the event and why it’s needed.
Tags: Kitchener-Waterloo, Toronto Posted in Funding | Comments Off on Toronto has the Entrepreneurs. Imagine If It Had the Cash.
For startups in Canada, raising capital is a major talking point both in social media and in the real world.
A funding roadshow and an article by BDC’s Matt Roberts on the current state of VC investments show up prominently as key topics of the current startup ecosystem social media conversation in Canada.
Over the past three months, the conversation has been active and diverse with 1,067 tweets from 636 accounts, and a combined reach of 5.1 million potential impressions.
Here’s what it looks like:
The Fundica Roadshowappears near the center of the word cloud as people attending the event have shared actively in social media. The roadshow is a Canadian initiative by Montreal-based financial services company, Fundica. With stops in 10 Canadian cities between February and May, the event aims to “to educate entrepreneurs on funding opportunities and facilitate connections between funders and startups.”
BDC’s associate director of venture capital Matt Roberts is another large term in the word cloud. Roberts sparked social media activity and conversation with this post:
This CDN $ collapse is crazy – I shared some thoughts on what I think this means for the Canadian Tech Ecosystem. https://t.co/HCGAMr2VhG
In the post, he says 2016 won’t be as good as 2015 when it comes to funding for Canadian tech companies. The key issue? “The collapse of the Canadian Dollar, hitting a low that hasn’t been seen since the 2003,” he writes, which will impact talent and venture capital funding.
One of the most retweeted pieces of content in the conversation was from the Feb 23 launch of the City of Toronto’s #StartUpHereTo project, which aims to create awareness of, and support, Toronto’s startup ecosystem.
“Diversity is one of our greatest strengths” says @JohnTory about Toronto’s startup ecosystem #StartupHereTO
Capturing Canadian entrepreneur stories also emerged as a popular part of the conversation. Another top retweeted message was about Startup North’s entrepreneur survey.
Past and Future Trends of Startups in Y Combinator’s Data
Friday, June 3rd, 2016This post was originally published on The Macro and is reprinted with permission. You can read the original here.
Reading applications to Y Combinator is like having access to a crystal ball.
Twice per year — once in the winter and once in the spring — thousands of men and women apply to Y Combinator. Each of these bright minds has his or her own vision of the future of technology. They pitch ideas related to Bitcoin, drones, new drugs, virtual reality, and nearly every other topic you could imagine.
Since 2008, we’ve received tens of thousands of these applications. Collectively, they provide insights into the ideas smart people are working on and how it’s changed over time. We’ve never talked about these publicly before.
But recently, we commissioned Priceonomics (YC W12) and their data studio to analyze eight years’ worth of our anonymized application data. After breaking the applications down into keywords, they calculated the percentage of applicants that mentioned any given term.
So let’s review the data, starting with a simple example.
There’s a question on the Y Combinator application “Who are your competitors? Who are you most afraid of?”. Looking at the answers to this question, we can see what companies founders have on their minds.
When Twitter was new and rapidly growing in 2010, there were many startups doing Twitter-like apps and tools for Twitter users, who were appropriately concerned that Twitter might compete with them. Very few applications mention Microsoft – Paul Graham has written about why that may be before.
Some startups are now making the top lists of competitors too. Uber and Airbnb are more than halfway to Google by number of mentions.
Other companies have completely dropped off the grid. Remember MySpace?
The rest of these graphs are based on the answer to the question “What is your company going to make?”. Let’s look at what this can tell about the platform shift from websites to apps.
While the trend in this graph is old news, it’s not obvious that it would take until 2016 for apps to overtake websites.
Within mobile devices, the iPad was mentioned specifically very often after it first came out. Now it’s mentioned rarely—probably not because people don’t build apps for iPads anymore, but instead because it’s simply so obvious that you will support iPads that people don’t even mention it. Interest in the Kindle was never very strong.
In the early days of Y Combinator, founders often pitched free and ad-supported business models. Throughout the startup world, that business model has become less common, replaced with companies charging customers directly. We always suspected this, and you can see it in this graph.
The term “SaaS” (Software-as-a-Service, aka, people pay for it) has increased in usage by 400% since 2008, while “Advertising” has decreased by more than 60%.
Startups related to blogging used to be very fashionable — many applications suggested tools for bloggers, better blogging sites, or search engines for blogs. This space is no longer popular.
There are still a lot of ideas aimed at improving or disrupting email, but not as many as there used to be. Messaging is now more popular.
Buried in the above chart is the exploding popularity of the messaging service, Slack.
Let’s take a closer look at Slack’s ascension by comparing it to the number of applications that mention other popular enterprise terms like “GitHub” and “Docker”:
Many startups believe that Slack has created an unmatched distribution opportunity. The interest in Slack-related concepts, mostly bots and concierge services, has exploded in the last year.
Next, let’s take a look at how has Bitcoin fared over the years.
Bitcoin-related ideas were briefly very popular, but fell off rapidly. These days, building things on top of the underlying blockchain is on the rise, and seems set to surpass bitcoin itself.
Hardware and biotech are all increasingly popular. Some of this reflects changes in the mix of startups applying to Y Combinator. Y Combinator originally focused on software companies but in the last few years has expanded to fund companies in every space. The rest of it reflects the overall hardware renaissance, and the surge of interest in biotech now that lab work is so much more accessible to startups.
Within hardware, smartwatches and other wearables remain popular, though they have plateaued now.
Other hardware items have not fared as well. Mentions of tablets and e-readers have sharply declined in YC applications in recent years.
Not surprisingly, VR is hot and getting hotter. We recently tweeted a call for more VR applications and got a great response.
But the biggest trend in the last couple of batches has been the surge in interest in applying AI to everything. Even these graphs understate the extent to which AI is now playing a role in many companies’ ideas.
To conclude, we’ve compiled many of the more popular terms mentioned in this post on one table, where you can compare them with one another. This list ranks terms by the percentage of applications that mention them. All companies mentioned have been highlighted in orange for reference.
Though on the decline, Facebook (4.2%) and Google (4%) are still the most-cited companies in YC applications. Newcomers — particularly Uber (2.6%) and Airbnb (2.1%), and Slack (1.1%) — are rapidly on the rise.
What this table doesn’t show us is which terms are on the rise or declining. So lastly, we’ve broken down the technologies and companies that are losing favor with applicants, as well as those which are ascending the fastest. We limited this list to terms that were mentioned in at least 0.5% of all 2016 applications (and rounded each figure to the nearest tenth of a percent).
As we touched on, the term Bitcoin has not fared well in YC application mentions over the past year — to the tune of a 61% decline in mentions. Also of note, Bluetooth, Crowdfunding, and Websites are in similar decline.
Of every term we included in this article, one stood far above the rest in terms of popularity: Slack. Over the past year, the company has experienced an 850% increase in YC application mentions.
Tags: Comment, Y Combinator
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