Y Combinator has just announced its “Part Time Partner” program, which will bring in former YC alumni to mentor the most recent cohort of startups, like regular partners, but only 1/5 of the time.
Joining the prestigious ranks of Paul Graham, Paul Buchheit, Trevor Blackwell, Jessica Livingston, MIT professor Robert Morris, and Harjeet Taggar are Loopt’s Sam Altman, Posterous’ Garry Tan and Justin.tv founders Emmett Shear and Justin Kan. Altman, Shear and Kan are from the first YC batch in 2005. “They’re good eggs and it’s nice to have them around,” Paul Graham wrote in the “Welcome” blog.
Y Combinator has funded a total of 316 startups to date with 64 in the current class. In a recent post on the value of a Y Combinator startups, Paul Graham pinned the total value of the top 21 YCombinator startups at $4.7 billion, which puts the averages out to around $22.4 million a startup.
“There is massive value creation happening through mentorship, the passing of knowledge, the value of the YC brand, and the community of hundreds of founders,” said new part time partner Tan. “I consider it a rare opportunity to help make YC the Harvard of this kind of value creation.”
Paul Graham explained the rationale behind the program, “These guys are more like the founders’ peers. They went through what the founders are going through, and perhaps still are dealing with more advanced versions of the same problems (e.g. raising money). So their advice is hard to ignore.”
YC partners are famous for the invaluable advice and mentorship they provide during “office hours” with the fledgling startups in each batch. You can watch Y Combinator founder Paul Graham bring these office hours to prime time onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt here.