Uber's first investors included StumbleUpon founder Garrett Camp

Read an article about Uber's origin story, which starts back in 2009 when its cofounders tried to catch a cab during a Paris snowstorm without much luck.

7 prominent investors rejected Airbnb in its early days

Airbnb is arguably known as one of the most successful startup stories of all time. But back in 2008, many prominent investors rejected their pitch when they went out to raise money—and Airbnb's founder still has the rejection emails to prove it.

7 angel investors funded Google in its early days

Entrepreneur Shaan Puri shares how seven strangers acted as Google’s earliest angel investors. The first gave Google $100K without even putting his equity agreement in writing. The investors on “Shark Tank” use their personal funds to support startups, but they’re often more predatory about terms than typical angels.

Cyan Banister, once homeless, was an angel investor in Uber, SpaceX, and DeepMind.

Andreessen Horowitz is among the most well-known venture capital firms

Also known as a16z, the firm has invested in companies such as Airbnb, Facebook, and Lyft since its founding in 2009. A podcast episode offers a deep dive into how the firm got started and became the industry disruptor it is today.

YC was partly inspired by an investor named Julian Weber

Y Combinator Cofounder Paul Graham’s former professor’s husband Julian Weber provided $10K in seed funding to Graham’s previous startup, Viaweb in its early days. In exchange, Weber received 10% of the company. Weber’s involvement inspired Graham to start a program where investors were more involved with the companies they contributed seed funding to.

More than $3.5B has been invested through AngelList

AngelList was created to connect startups and angel investors. It’s evolved since its 2010 founding and has been used by companies like Uber and OpenSea.

The dot-com boom made Mark Cuban a billionaire

Cuban co-founded AudioNet with Todd Wagner in 1995 before it became Broadcast.com—a web app that allowed people to listen to sports commentary on their computers if they couldn't watch a game. In 1999, Yahoo bought Broadcast.com for $5.7B. By the time the market crashed, Cuban had already sold most of his stock in the company and had become a billionaire.

Venture capital is a type of financing that firms and funds use to invest in startups they believe have the potential for long-term growth

Household name companies such as Airbnb and Uber might not exist without venture capital, which is commonly referred to as "VC" for short.

Many startup founders pull out-of-the-box stunts to get their businesses off the ground.

More than 400 investors turned Peloton down in its initial funding rounds

Peloton founder John Foley said investors rejected the company's initial funding requests because there was no clear indication of what the market for at-home fitness classes looked like. Ultimately, more than 200 angel investors gave the company its first round of cash. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

One Facebook investor turned $500K into $1B

Peter Thiel was Facebook's first big investor. In 2004, he invested $500K into the social network, long before the company owned Instagram or renamed itself "Meta." In 2012, when he sold off most of his stake, he turned that initial $500K investment into more than $1B in cash.

Visualize where the first batch of founders from the famous startup accelerator Y Combinator are now.

'Startups' can be defined as small, early-stage companies that are designed to grow fast.

Y Combinator was founded in 2005 to bridge gaps between founders and investors

In one of Paul Graham’s essays on his website, he took the time to explain how and why he and his cofounders (including his girlfriend at the time, and now wife, Jessica Livingston), came up with the idea of and eventually created Y Combinator.

Early-stage investors say ‘no’ to the vast majority of funding pitches

Angel investor Alicia Syrett details the top reasons investors turn down entrepreneurs. For example, the entrepreneur didn’t do their homework by, for instance, not researching the investor.

Find out how venture capitalists make decisions

More than 30% of venture capital deals come from leads courtesy of a VC’s former colleagues or professional network. You can learn more about how venture capitalists decide which companies to invest in by reading this article.

Sam Altman gave his first-ever startup pitch after dropping out of Stanford

He dropped out of Stanford to start Loopt, which sold in 2012 for $43.4M. You can watch his first-ever startup pitch in a video.

How venture capital firms came to be

The venture capital firm that kickstarted an industry.

Angel investors often come together as a syndicate

Startups raise money in different rounds from investors that include their friends and family, angels, and venture capital funds. These types of investors serve different purposes.

Explore Bessemer's anti-portfolio of missed opportunities

From Pinterest to Yelp, Bessemer Venture Partners—one of the most well-known VC firms—has invested in many successful companies over the years. But the firm has also kicked itself for passing on a few great opportunities, like Apple and Google. Check out the other companies in Bessemer's "anti-portfolio" here.

Mark Zuckerberg was nearly fired from his own company after refusing to sell Facebook to Yahoo for $1B

In 2006, Yahoo tried to buy Facebook for $1B. Despite enthusiasm from nearly all of Facebook's management team and board (which included PayPal cofounder and famed investor Peter Thiel at the time), then 22-year-old Zuckerberg turned down the offer, insisting that Yahoo undervalued the company and didn't have a clear vision for the future. Zuckerberg has since said he regrets not being clear about his intentions to grow the company with his team before the Yahoo bid, as almost all of the company's management team left after he turned down the offer.

Bumble's origin story includes a Russian billionaire, a Tinder cofounder, and a private jet.

YouTube was acquired by Google for $1.65B in stock during its second year

In 2006, Google acquired YouTube for $1.65B, only two years after its launch. Sequoia Capital, one of Silicon Valley's best-known venture firms, was an early investor in the streaming video platform, seeing it as the next step in the evolution of user-generated content that flourished online during the mid-2000s.

Read Paul Graham’s initial post announcing YC’s first batch

In March 2005, Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham announced the program that would become Y Combinator on his website.

Blackstone acquired a majority stake in Bumble's former parent company in 2019 ahead of the dating app's IPO

The New York City-based investment management company paid about $3B for its stake in female-focused dating app Bumble. The app's 2021 IPO that made Bumble Founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd a billionaire at age 31 proved lucrative for Blackstone as well.

Facebook settled a lawsuit over Zuckerberg allegedly stealing the original idea for the company for $65M

While at Harvard, three students (Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra) approached Mark Zuckerberg with the idea for a platform exclusively for Harvard students called ConnectU. Those students sued Facebook, alleging that Zuckerberg stole the idea from the trio.

Mark Zuckerberg credits some of Facebook's success to constant evolution

Before becoming the head of OpenAI, Sam Altman was the president of Y Combinator—a startup accelerator company that supported companies like Airbnb, DoorDash, and Coinbase. In 2016, Altman interviewed Zuckerberg about creating Facebook and its growth over time. Zuckerberg said that, unlike other companies (think: CourseMatch), Facebook kept growing and adding new features, which prevented the app from becoming obsolete.

In 2023, venture capital firms invested $170B in over 15,000 US companies

That's a significant drop from 2022’s $242B, reflecting market uncertainty but continuing VC’s role in scaling transformative ideas. Rooted in early risk-sharing models, venture capital took off with firms like ARDC in 1946, later evolving into today’s influential players like Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.

Angel investors typically fund a startup at an earlier stage than venture capitalists

Angel investors and venture capitalists both invest in startups, but they differ in a few key ways. Angel investors typically invest earlier and in a smaller amount.

Warren Buffett has said not investing in Google or Amazon early enough was a mistake on his part

After avoiding investing in tech stocks during the dot-com boom, Buffett's stance on investing in tech was widely criticized. Buffett later shared his thoughts on why he regrets not investing early enough.

ChatGPT was conceived over dinner at a Silicon Valley hotel.

Facebook was almost sold to Yahoo! for $1B, but its CEO refused

The board tried to fire Mark Zuckerberg for his resistance, which he blames for failing to communicate the long-term vision of the company. He claims the company has succeeded by launching products quickly to learn faster than its competitors.

In high school, Mark Zuckerberg rejected Microsoft's proposal to buy his music suggestion software for $950K

Mark Zuckerberg and Adam D'Angleo built a website called "Synapse," which created playlists for users based on their listening preferences and an algorithm to suggest new songs, in September 2002.

Apple’s third cofounder was its angel investor

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak are well-known for cofounding Apple, but the company had a third founder who acted as an angel investor: Mike Markkula, who invested $250K in 1977.

For Reddit's founders, the company's early days included choosing a dinner with Y Combinator's Paul Graham over a spring break trip, a $10M Condé Nast acquisition, and other pivotal moments.

Prediction market Polymarket's CEO dropped out of New York University

Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan started building Polymarket when he was 21. Polymarket has been backed by billionaire investors such as Peter Thiel and Vitalik Buterin.

Platforms like AngelList help angel investors find startups to fund

Angel investors leverage their high net worths to fund seed-stage startups. While they could see high returns, investing in such an early company is a risk.

Startup accelerators offer mentorship and seed funding in exchange for equity

Those programs, such as Y Combinator and Techstars, not only offer expert advice to founders, but also seed funding in exchange for equity. The goal is to help young startups learn from successful companies, making it more likely they attract venture capital.

Y Combinator changed the way startups around the world are built

Many of the philosophies that the leaders of Y Combinator have infused into the program’s portfolio companies have become the playbook for building the next big thing, such as its focus on founder personality and more.

Yahoo acquired Paul Graham's former startup Viaweb in 1998

Viaweb was the web app tech startup that Paul Graham, Robert Morris, and Trevor Blackwell cofounded before they started Y Combinator. The company sold for $49M and Viaweb was rebranded as the Yahoo Store.

Startups fundraise in 'rounds' as they prove out their business and scale

When startups take on outside funding, those investments are divided into different "rounds." These rounds are catered to different stages in a startup's life cycle—a startup often needs different types of investors and amounts of funding at different stages of the business. For instance, a pre-seed investment round can include investments ranging from about $25K to $500K, whereas a Series D investment can be hundreds of millions of dollars.

Listen to a podcast episode where Y Combinator CEO Gary Tan explains why YC tends to outperform many other Silicon Valley startup accelerators.

Many original dot-com company founders were bought out early on

The people who bought the original domains for dot-com companies and had the ideas to start businesses were often bought out by investors before becoming well-known companies. Both Pets.com and Broadcast.com were acquired early on.

The early success of Facebook made Mark Zuckerberg a college campus celebrity

Within 24 hours of launching in 2004, more than 1,200 Harvard students signed up to the platform, which quickly expanded to other Ivy League and Boston-area schools within months. By year's end, Zuckerberg left Harvard to run the company in California.

Angel investors often receive significant equity because of the risk they take

Angel investors fund startups at an early stage, at which time a company’s success is less assured. In exchange, they often ask for a significant equity stake.

Why women are underrepresented in VC

Only about 11% of investing partners at venture capital firms are women, according to Harvard Kennedy School research. What’s more, only about 13% of VC dollars go to startups with a woman on the founding team. To learn more about why women are so often sidelined on both sides of the venture capital equation, click here.

Watch the DoorDash team's YC application video

In 2013, the cofounders of DoorDash created a simple, homemade video application to Y Combinator. They didn't know it at the time, but they'd be accepted—and their company would go on to be publicly traded on the NASDAQ.

See the 25 largest initial public offerings in US history.

These 25 companies—which include UPS, Uber Technologies, AT&T, and The Kraft Heinz Co.—had some of the biggest IPO drops in US history. However, not all these drops led to long-term (or even immediate) success.

Seed funding is often the first round of capital that a startup raises

Early-stage startups often try to secure seed funding from investors in order to take their idea from concept to reality.