The Number
This is the standard equity percentage Y Combinator takes in exchange for its program and investment.
What is 7%?
This electric scooter company was one of the fastest startups ever to reach unicorn status and filed for bankruptcy in 2023 after burning through hundreds of millions.
What is Bird?
This document, popularized by Y Combinator, lets a startup raise money from an investor today with equity issued later at the next priced round.
What is a SAFE?
This company originally called its product "Tote," was rejected by 7 VCs before closing its seed round, and is now one of the most visited websites in the world.
What is Pinterest?
This chemical element, extracted primarily from brine and hard rock mines in South America, is the key active ingredient in the batteries powering most EVs today.
What is lithium?
When Google acquired YouTube in 2006 for $1.65B, YouTube had approximately this many full-time employees at the time of acquisition.
What is 65?
This office-sharing company's 2019 IPO collapsed spectacularly, wiping out billions in perceived value and triggering the ouster of its founder Adam Neumann.
What is WeWork?
A startup is negotiating its Series A and the lead investor insists on a clause allowing them to maintain their ownership percentage in future rounds. What is this right called?
What is pro-rata rights?
Peter Thiel wrote a $500K angel check into this company in 2004, receiving 10.2% in return. It is now one of the most valuable companies in human history.
What is Facebook?
This is the term for the rate at which a battery degrades over charge cycles, measured as a percentage of original capacity - a critical spec for EV manufacturers and grid storage operators alike.
What is capacity fade or degradation rate?
Sequoia invested $60M in WhatsApp across two rounds. When Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19B in 2014, Sequoia's stake was worth approximately this amount.
What is $3 billion?
This blood-testing startup raised nearly $1B, was valued at $9B at its peak, and collapsed after a Wall Street Journal investigation revealed its core technology never actually worked.
What is Theranos?
This ratio measures the total value of a fund to paid-in capital, including both unrealized and realized value.
What is TVPI?
This company began as an internal tool at a gaming startup called Glitch, was spun out when the game failed, became one of the most valuable SaaS companies ever built, and is the platform this team uses every day.
What is Slack?
Geothermal energy companies like Fervo drill into the earth to access heat. This is the term for the temperature gradient that describes how much the earth's temperature increases per unit of depth - the core metric that determines a site's energy potential.
What is the geothermal gradient?
This is the approximate amount SoftBank's Vision Fund lost on WeWork alone - the single largest venture write-down in history at the time.
What is $9 billion?
This meal kit company raised over $700M, went public in 2017, and filed for bankruptcy in 2018 — a cautionary tale about unit economics and customer retention in consumer climate-adjacent food tech.
What is Blue Apron?
This right gives a VC first opportunity to invest in a startup's next financing round before the company can approach outside investors.
What is a right of first refusal or ROFR?
This Copenhagen-founded fintech was rejected by multiple European VCs, hit a $46B peak valuation, crashed to $6.7B in a 2022 down round, then went public in 2023 at over $20B.
What is Klarna?
This electrochemical process, used in green hydrogen production, splits water into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity.
What is electrolysis?
Peter Thiel's $500K angel check into Facebook in 2004 was worth approximately this amount when the company went public in 2012.
What is $1 billion?
This solar panel manufacturer raised $535M including a $528M DOE loan guarantee, became a symbol of government-backed cleantech investment, and filed for bankruptcy in 2011 after being undercut by cheap Chinese imports.
What is Solyndra?
This provision allows investors to force a company to repurchase their shares at the original purchase price plus interest if certain conditions aren't met - effectively a guaranteed exit mechanism.
What is a redemption right?
This AI safety company was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, raised over $7B from Google and others.
What is Anthropic?
Grid-scale battery storage systems lose a percentage of energy during each charge-discharge cycle. This term describes the ratio of energy output to energy input in a storage system - and for lithium-ion grid storage it typically runs between 85-95%.
What is round-trip efficiency?