Along with a cadre of other TechCrunch folks, I spent this week extremely focused on one event: Y Combinator. The elite accelerator announced a staggering 377 startups as its Summer 2021 cohort. We covered every single on-the-record startup that presented and plucked out some favorites: Here are all the companies from Y Combinator’s Summer 2021 Demo Day, Part 1 Here are all the companies from Day 2 of Y Combinator’s Summer 2021 Demo Day Our favorite startups from YC’s Summer 21 Demo Day, Part 1 Our favorite startups from YC’s Summer 21 Demo Day, Part 2 There’s something quite earnest and magical about spending literally hours hearing founder after founder pitch their ideas, with one minute, a single slide and a whole lot of optimism. It’s why I like covering demo days: I get tunnel vision into where innovation is going next, what behemoths are ripe for disruption and what founders think is a witty competitive edge versus a simple baseline. That said, I will share one caveat. While YC is an ambitious snapshot, it’s not entirely illustrative of the next wave of decision-makers and leaders within startups — from a diversity perspective. The accelerator posted small gains in the number of women and LatinX founders in its batch, but dropped in the number of Black founders participating. The need for more diverse accelerators has never been more obvious, and as some in the tech community argue, is Y Combinator’s biggest blind spot. This in mind, I want to leave… Click below to read the full story from TechCrunch
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What 377 Y Combinator pitches will teach you about startups
