the idea maze</a> — trying to get product-market fit, finding it, and holding on to it – to get you through that maze yourself. If you’ve been in there at all, you know how hard it is to even<em> find</em> product-market fit, let alone keep it.</p><p>I’m proud to say our newest group partner is Tom Blomfield, who has been there not once but <strong>twice,</strong> and twice emerged with a billion-dollar company.</p><p>I first met Tom in 2011 when he went through YC with <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/gocardless/">GoCardless, an online payments processor for the Direct Debit system and Tom’s first billion-dollar company. I was a YC partner at the time, and office hours with Tom quickly proved that he was an extremely smart, direct, yet empathetic founder. </p><p>In 2015, Tom went on to create <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/monzo-bank/">Monzo, one of the first app-based challenger banks in the UK and his second billion-dollar company. In 2021, he <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/welcome-surbhi-nicolas-divya-ashu-and-tom/">returned to YC as a visiting group partner for the most recent three batches. </p><p>When it comes to group partners, we look for the most experienced founders to mentor startups throughout the batch. While most people spend their career building up that experience in one area, Tom has domain expertise in multiple — B2B software with GoCardless, and consumer/viral marketing with Monzo. He has a unique set of skills as someone who led as both a technical co-founder (at GoCardless) and CEO (at Monzo), and the rare experience of scaling not one, but two, massively successful companies. </p><p>Today, the YC community is made up of more than 90 billion-dollar companies and that number is always growing. Tom leverages his experience to advise alumni at every stage of their startup – whether it’s just figuring out if an idea works, putting a board together, growing a team to thousands of employees, running multiple offices, or later-stage fundraising. There’s not a startup that he can’t give useful advice to, always drawn from his own experience. </p><p>The traits I saw in Tom as a founder in 2011 have proven to be extremely beneficial as a group partner. He’s direct with founders while having empathy for the difficulties of being one. He helps founders see that the smallest ideas can lead to world-changing companies, and he provides them with the optimism needed at the lowest points in the founder journey. </p><p>We now have the <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/people/">largest number of group partners</a> in YC history. We’re increasingly finding that our best alumni are coming back to be group partners to shepherd in the next generation. Tom is no exception. His experience has already proven invaluable to the YC community, and we’re so thrilled he has joined as a group partner!</p>","comment_id":"646cef8dbd93340001aed321","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2023/05/Tom-Blomfield-YC.png","featured":true,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2023-05-23T09:53:33.000-07:00","updated_at":"2023-07-21T10:37:16.000-07:00","published_at":"2023-05-24T09:00:00.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":"Introducing YC's newest Group Partner, Tom Blomfield","codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710d2","name":"Garry Tan","slug":"garry","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2023/03/Instagram-Image-Template--Square---21-.png","cover_image":null,"bio":"Garry is the President & CEO of Y Combinator. Previously, he was the co-founder & Managing Partner of Initialized Capital. 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Ivana Djuretic, Co-founder and CSO, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://asherbio.com//">Asher Bio</a><br>Rachel Rea, Sr. Director, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.medtronic.com/us-en/index.html/">Medtronic
Cami Samuels, Partner, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.venrock.com//">Venrock
Tanay Tandon, Co-founder and CEO of <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/athelas/">Athelas
Sid Viswanathan, Co-founder and CEO, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://truepill.com//">TruePill
and more to be announced<br><br>When people think of Y Combinator, what often comes to mind first are the software companies that got their start with YC – companies like Airbnb, DoorDash and Stripe. But within the last 5 years, YC has funded over 500 healthcare and bio startups, 9 of which are now billion dollar companies. We’ve quietly become the largest seed stage funder of bio startups in the world. We're looking forward to sharing what we’ve learned from funding hundreds of founders and working alongside them as their companies have grown. <br><br>If you’re in the early stages of starting a bio startup or are considering starting one, we hope you join us. <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://ychealthandbiosummit2022.splashthat.com//">Sign up to attend here</a>.</p>","comment_id":"6320f7135142100001443588","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/09/biosummit.jpeg","featured":true,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2022-09-13T14:33:07.000-07:00","updated_at":"2022-09-14T09:01:34.000-07:00","published_at":"2022-09-14T08:55:00.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":"We’re excited to announce the first YC Health and Bio Summit that will take place in San Francisco on October 21, 2022. \nThe half day conference will feature bio and healthcare founders and investors who will tell their stories and share advice for entrepreneurs who are just getting started. ","codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71072","name":"Surbhi Sarna","slug":"surbhi-sarna","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/09/1563221214332.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Surbhi is a group partner at Y Combinator. 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The half day conference will feature bio and healthcare founders and investors who will tell their stories and share advice for entrepreneurs who are just getting started.","reading_time":1,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":null},{"id":"63f91878d2b0220001e8d6e9","uuid":"a99f2458-1bdd-4a40-81e6-36ee441b133c","title":"Congratulations to the 2023 YC Top Companies!","slug":"yc-top-companies-feb-2023","html":"<p>We’re excited to present the 2023 YC Top Companies!</p><p>The startups are separated into 3 lists: YC’s top <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">private</a>, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/public/" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">public</a>, and <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/exits/" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">exited</a>. 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Public companies are listed in alphabetical order.</p><p>The Breakthrough Companies list highlights the fast-growing companies we’ve doubled down on – which means they’ve all received significant additional investment from YC in their post-Demo Day rounds. </p><p><strong>Here are stats about the companies on this year’s list:</strong></p><p><strong>&gt;</strong> More than 290 private YC companies and 33 exits are valued at over $150M, over 90 are worth more than $1B, and 16 are public. </p><p><strong>&gt;</strong> 58% of the companies have HQs in the Bay Area. 27% of the companies are fully remote, and 55% list themselves as partially remote.</p><p><strong>&gt;</strong> YC Top Companies have HQs in 40 countries including: United States, India, United Kingdom, Canada, Colombia, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, France, Spain, Israel, Netherlands, Philippines, Portugal, Germany, Egypt, Ireland, South Korea, Peru, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, Australia, Bolivia, Switzerland, Algeria, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Romania, Sweden, Senegal, Uganda, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam</p><p><strong>&gt;</strong> YC W16 is the most represented batch (by percentage). 23% of the companies from W16 are on the YC Top Companies list. </p><p><strong>&gt;</strong> Here’s a sector breakdown of the top companies:</p><ul><li>B2B Software and Services: 43%</li><li>Financial Technology and Services: 19%</li><li>Consumer: 13%</li><li>Healthcare: 12%</li><li>Industrials: 7%</li><li>Real Estate and Construction: 3%</li><li>Education and Government: 3%</li></ul><p><strong>&gt;</strong> 10 new companies joined the lists since August 2022:</p><p>Private:</p><ul><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/treasury-prime/">Treasury Prime</a> (YC W18) - Embedded banking software platform and marketplace</li><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/onesignal/">OneSignal (YC S11) - Engage customers through personalized omni-channel messaging</li><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/skill-lync/">Skill-lync (YC W19) - Online engineering college for India</li><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/tigereye/">TigerEye (YC S22) - Modern enterprise software for sales leaders</li><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/zeitview/">Zeitview (YC W15) - Inspection software for renewable energy &amp; sustainable infrastructure</li><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/ontop/">OnTop (YC W21) - A bank for remote workers connected to payroll</li><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/obie/">Obie (YC S19) - Insurance and risk management for landlords</li><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/nabis/">Nabis (YC W19) - The largest licensed cannabis wholesale platform</li></ul><p>Public:</p><ul><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/presto/">Presto (YC S10) - Digital meets physical for big chain restaurants</li></ul><p>Exits:</p><ul><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/nurx/">NURX (YC W16) - Medicine or testing kit, prescribed online, and delivered to your door </li></ul><p>One thing to note is that this is not an exhaustive list of YC’s top companies. 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Tom Blomfield of GoCardless and Monzo is our newest Group Partner

by Garry Tan5/24/2023

A photo of Tom Blomfield, the newest Group Partner at Y Combinator

To help you make a startup that matters, it helps to have people who have been in the idea maze — trying to get product-market fit, finding it, and holding on to it – to get you through that maze yourself. If you’ve been in there at all, you know how hard it is to even find product-market fit, let alone keep it.

I’m proud to say our newest group partner is Tom Blomfield, who has been there not once but twice, and twice emerged with a billion-dollar company.

I first met Tom in 2011 when he went through YC with GoCardless, an online payments processor for the Direct Debit system and Tom’s first billion-dollar company. I was a YC partner at the time, and office hours with Tom quickly proved that he was an extremely smart, direct, yet empathetic founder.

In 2015, Tom went on to create Monzo, one of the first app-based challenger banks in the UK and his second billion-dollar company. In 2021, he returned to YC as a visiting group partner for the most recent three batches.

When it comes to group partners, we look for the most experienced founders to mentor startups throughout the batch. While most people spend their career building up that experience in one area, Tom has domain expertise in multiple — B2B software with GoCardless, and consumer/viral marketing with Monzo. He has a unique set of skills as someone who led as both a technical co-founder (at GoCardless) and CEO (at Monzo), and the rare experience of scaling not one, but two, massively successful companies.

Today, the YC community is made up of more than 90 billion-dollar companies and that number is always growing. Tom leverages his experience to advise alumni at every stage of their startup – whether it’s just figuring out if an idea works, putting a board together, growing a team to thousands of employees, running multiple offices, or later-stage fundraising. There’s not a startup that he can’t give useful advice to, always drawn from his own experience.

The traits I saw in Tom as a founder in 2011 have proven to be extremely beneficial as a group partner. He’s direct with founders while having empathy for the difficulties of being one. He helps founders see that the smallest ideas can lead to world-changing companies, and he provides them with the optimism needed at the lowest points in the founder journey.

We now have the largest number of group partners in YC history. We’re increasingly finding that our best alumni are coming back to be group partners to shepherd in the next generation. Tom is no exception. His experience has already proven invaluable to the YC community, and we’re so thrilled he has joined as a group partner!

Author

  • Garry Tan

    Garry is the President & CEO of Y Combinator. Previously, he was the co-founder & Managing Partner of Initialized Capital. Before that, he co-founded Posterous (YC S08) which was acquired by Twitter.