How Wide Is The Gap Between Y Combinator and Techstars?

FYI - The Seedscout Daily has been renamed to Red Pilled, by Seedscout.

I think the consensus among the startup world is that Y Combinator is the best startup accelerator in the world. I also think that it’s widely agreed upon that Techstars is the second best startup accelerator in the world. The main question people tend to have is how much space is in between YC and Techstars? Is Techstars closing in on YC or is it falling behind? How is it even possible to know?

Although I don’t have access to the startup return data, there are tools that can paint a picture on how close these two top accelerators are to each other in global impact. We can use this data to infer the rest.

Site Traffic

Y Combinator gets 1.8M site visits every month, with that number steadily growing over time.

Techstars gets 44,646 visits per month, which is trending downward after peaking at 125.3k in early 2021.

Domain Authority

Y Combinator has a domain authority of 69, which is made up of 103.8k domains referring to the website. It is ranked in the top 3,000 websites on the internet based on relevancy/traffic.

Techstars has a domain authority of 43, which is made up of 25,001 domains referring to the website. It is ranked in the top 81,000 websites on the internet based on relevancy/traffic.

Impact On World

I crunched the numbers and checked the monthly traffic for the top YC companies vs. the top Techstars companies, and compare them below. The data here is to just show you the impact that each accelerator has had on the world based on the overall attention their top startups are getting.

Y Combinator

1. Reddit - 170,875,501 monthly visits

2. DoorDash - 24,683,587 monthly visits

3. Airbnb - 20,181,544 monthly visits

4. Coinbase - 12,418,601 monthly visits

5. Dropbox - 10,438,578 monthly visits

6. Instacart - 5,109,234 monthly visits

7. Zapier- 3,458,433 monthly visits

8. Stripe - 2,814,276 monthly visits

9. Gitlab - 2,087,771 monthly visits

10. OpenSea - 2,039,348 monthly visits

Techstars

1. TradingView - 25,983,411 monthly visits

2. DigitalOcean - 4,108,456 monthly visits

3. Remitly - 719,247 monthly visits

4. Classpass - 657,390 monthly visits

5. Sendgrid - 392,986 monthly visits

6. Newsela - 257,119 monthly visits

7. Owlet Care - 174,433 monthly visits

8. Outreach - 93,890 monthly visits

9. DataRobot - 67,283 monthly visits

10. Zipline - 64,856 monthly visits

Clearly the global impact and mindshare of the top YC startups are on a whole different planet when compared to Techstars; Just look at the discrepancies in the companies with millions of visitors vs. thousands.

In Summary

I think it’s pretty clear that the gap is quite wide between the two. Although Techstars is one of the most successful accelerators in the world, the point of this post is to simply show how far ahead of the pack YC truly is. From the difference in website traffic, to presence on the internet, to see how influential their companies are in the world, the gap between #1 and #2 could not be any farther apart. I think it’s important to keep this in mind when deciding to join either of these accelerators or invest in companies out of them, especially if the prices are the in the same ballpark.