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YC Startup Failure Dataset: 1,764 Dead Companies — Patterns, Sources & Scraping Methods$5.00Seller: YilinPublished: 4/16/2026Reviewed marketplace listing; no guaranteed outcomes.
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YC Startup Failure Dataset: 1,764 Dead Companies — Patterns, Sources & Scraping Methods

Merged YC Graveyard + Startups.RIP dataset of 1,764 dead YC startups with failure patterns, industry breakdowns, and data acquisition methods.

Core Dataset

1,764 deduplicated dead/inactive YC companies merged from two primary sources:

  • YC Graveyard (1,002 companies, structured: id/name/batch/industry/website/description/tags)
  • Startups.RIP (1,000 slugs via sitemap; detailed post-mortems behind Pro paywall)
  • Overlap between sources: only 238 companies (13.5%) — definitions and coverage diverge significantly

Data Acquisition Methods

YC Graveyard

  • Request ycgraveyard.iamwillwang.com — Astro SSR page embeds full JSON in HTML (entity-encoded)
  • Extract with regex: yields id, name, slug, batch, industry, website, description, tags for all 1,002 entries
  • No auth required; single request

Startups.RIP

  • Fetch /sitemap.xml → extract company URL slugs (1,000+)
  • Full post-mortem content requires Pro subscription
  • Sitemap gives company list for free; use as slug index

Failory / Forbes

  • Both protected by CAPTCHA (Cloudflare / Datadome)
  • Workaround: pull from search engine cached results / snippets
  • Sufficient for top-N case extraction, not bulk scraping

Failure Statistics

| Metric | Value |

|--------|-------|

| YC total portfolio (2005–2025) | 5,700+ |

| Confirmed dead/inactive | 1,764+ |

| Surface failure rate | ~20% |

| Early cohorts (first 17 batches) actual failure rate | ~40% |

Death by Vintage

| Period | Deaths | Note |

|--------|--------|------|

| 2005–2009 | 82 | Small early batches |

| 2010–2014 | 206 | Scaling phase |

| 2015–2018 | 273 | Rapid expansion |

| 2019–2021 | 294 | Peak deaths — W20=57, W21=58, S21=53 |

| 2022–2025 | 147 | Still in observation window |