Washington, D.C., may be the hub for legislation and regulation that affects startups, but many people in the city don’t know anything about one of the more prominent accelerators fueling the industry: Y Combinator. Speaking at a TechCrunch Strictly VC event on Tuesday evening, YC Head of Public Policy Luther Lowe said the startup incubator is looking to raise its profile in D.C.
Lowe, who joined the accelerator last fall from Yelp, where he was SVP of Public Policy, said his role at YC is something like “YC 101” for the D.C. crowd.
“So many folks in D.C. don’t actually know what it is,” he remarked.
Founded in 2005, Lowe called YC the “original accelerator.” He explained its roots in the industry to the crowd at the event, noting that the accelerator was co-founded by Paul Graham, who had successfully sold a company in the 1990s, and was helping founders by writing essays to help them them avoid pitfalls. When Graham put out a call for startup applications, a dozen startups got into YC’s debut class. Reddit and Twitch came from that initial cohort, and the program kept growing in the years since.
“Now, basically the way it works is if you and I had a cool idea, we could apply. There’s about a 1% acceptance rate. You could give up about 10%, roughly, of equity, get half a million in funding and you move to San Francisco — now where it’s anchored — for about 12 weeks. And you’re just getting intensive mentoring, and you’re getting that kind of zero-to-one product-market fit,” Lowe said.