Insight · Y Combinator

YC's consumer era is over: two decades of industry drift

In 2008, just over half of Y Combinator's funded companies were consumer startups and B2B was the other half of the story. The two curves have been diverging ever since: by the 2026 batches, B2B accounts for over 60% of companies while consumer has shrunk to roughly one in twenty. The drift is visible batch by batch — one two-dimensional aggregation over YC's own public directory.

B2B vs Consumer, share of each batch year (%)

B2B share %Consumer share %

All numbers (companies per batch year by industry)

Year	Total	B2B	Consumer	Healthcare	Fintech	Industrials	Government	Education	Real Estate and Construction	Unspecified
2008	43	20	22	0	1	0	0	0	0	0
2009	42	14	21	0	2	0	0	1	4	0
2010	63	33	25	0	2	0	0	1	2	0
2011	105	53	32	5	7	0	0	5	3	0
2012	149	73	48	6	8	4	0	7	3	0
2013	98	51	27	10	6	1	0	2	1	0
2014	152	64	40	12	14	11	1	2	3	5
2015	215	84	47	31	18	14	3	4	9	5
2016	224	83	54	30	17	20	2	6	7	5
2017	241	68	55	37	26	28	5	8	11	3
2018	277	100	54	64	25	17	3	8	6	0
2019	371	152	64	49	47	27	4	12	16	0
2020	437	209	56	68	56	23	2	9	14	0
2021	727	342	78	106	114	43	2	28	14	0
2022	632	301	60	69	132	36	1	9	24	0
2023	493	337	32	51	45	11	1	6	10	0
2024	591	373	56	61	38	39	7	6	11	0
2025	626	410	44	45	35	59	9	11	13	0
2026	409	255	20	35	36	54	1	0	8	0

Methodology & caveats

· One query: POST /v1/yc/companies/search with {"group_by":["batch_year","industry"]}.
· Industry labels are YC's own top-level taxonomy from the public directory; one industry per company.
· 2005–2007 batches (under 20 companies each) are excluded from the chart as share noise; future announced batches are excluded as not yet complete.
· The directory lists launched companies only. Data as of 2026-06-11.

Cross-cut by tag, region, or status via the YC directory API. Related: batch survival rates · all insights.