Y Combinator, a seed fund, has a very successful track record in supporting startups. In fact, Y Combinator has contributed to more than 800 startups since its inception in March of 2005 and the combined values of the companies they have invested in is over $30 billion. Over the years they have supported and helped establish some of the most well-known Internet companies like Dropbox, Reddit, Codecademy, and Scribd. If Y Combinator selects a startup, the startup moves to Silicon Valley for 3 months during which Y Combinator works to hone and polish each company to pitch to bigger investors. Y Combinator is composed of 1,600 investors, and twice a year, they invest $120,000 in a large number of startups.
In 2013, Y Combinator began accepting applications for non-profits. The first non-profit they funded, Watsi, is the Kickstarter for funding healthcare for people around the world. When investing in non-profits, Y Combinator is actually making a donation and not taking a stake in the organization. They were extremely happy with the results of their pilot program and have expanded their non-profit profile (7 out of 75 companies in their Winter 2014 batch were non-profits). By expanding their non-profit profile, Y Combinator is lending their business acumen to helping non-profits become more sustainable and provide non-profits with the opportunity to learn from some of the smartest and most successful business minds in the world.
Below are some non-profits from Y Combinator's Winter 2014 batch:
• CareMessage enables healthcare organizations to facilitate communication and outreach to promote engagement ad better self-care.
• CodeNow focuses on teaching under-represented youth to code.
• One Degree personalizes and recommends resources to people living under the poverty line and helps them to locate much-needed social services.
• Zidisha enables low-interest and direct microlending to entrepreneurs.
• Noora Health provides in-person, video-based training resources for families of high-risk patients to effectively take care of patients once they've left the hospital or clinic.
Click here to learn more about some of Y Combinator's most recent batch of non-profits.