| 50% | “50%” | Stuart: GPU networking can consume up to 50% of LLaMA pre-fill runtime | Stuart (Stu) | Jul 29, 2026 | Supported |
| 50% | “50%” | Vuong: OpenX generalist robot model outperformed embodiment-specific specialists by 50% | Quan Vuong | Apr 16, 2026 | Supported |
| 50% | “50%” | Vuong: Claude-based on-call agent boosted compute utilization by 50% | Quan Vuong | Apr 16, 2026 | — |
| 50% | “50%” | Hodak: Personal probability of AI doom is well below 50 percent | Max Hodak | Mar 9, 2026 | — |
| 50% | “50%” | Ng: AI coding makes prototyping 10x faster, production only 50% faster | Andrew Ng | Jul 10, 2025 | — |
| 50% | “50%” | Truell: AI writes 40% to 50% of all code produced inside Cursor | Michael Truell | Jun 11, 2025 | — |
| 50% | “50%” | Truell: Fast-growing AI startups must break rules against 50% annual headcount growth | Michael Truell | Jun 11, 2025 | — |
| 50% | “50%” | Palicha: Generative AI dynamically resolves over 50% of Zepto support tickets | Aadit Palicha | Apr 18, 2025 | — |
| 50% | “50%” | Schaad: Voice AI can automate 50% of calls before human handoff | Raphael Schaad | Feb 27, 2025 | — |
| 50% | “50%” | Public software firms spend 50% more on sales for less new ARR | Parker Conrad | Jan 10, 2025 | Supported |
| 50% | “50%” | Half of all Y Combinator startups eventually pivot from their first idea | Nicolas Dessaigne | Nov 26, 2024 | — |
| 50% | “50%” | Tan: $50M ARR YC company automated 60% of support to reach profitability | Garry Tan | Nov 1, 2024 | — |
| 50% | “50%” | Blomfield: Price B2B software at 25% to 50% of value delivered | Tom Blomfield | Jul 25, 2024 | — |
| 50% | “50%” | Technical founders stop coding once engineering teams exceed 10 people | Diana Hu | Apr 21, 2023 | — |
| 50% | “50%” | Epstein: Top 10 YC companies generate 50% of top 100 overall value | Aaron Epstein | Dec 15, 2022 | Supported |
| 50% | “50%” | Friedman: Close to 50% of YC Summer 23 Batch Used LLMs | Jared Friedman | Feb 8, 2024 | Supported |
| 50% | “50%” | Saez-Gil: Carbon market capital flow is growing 50% year-over-year | Diego Saez-Gil | Jan 28, 2020 | Contradicted |
| 50% | “50%” | Adora Cheung: Top YC Demo Day startups grow 5% to 10% weekly | Adora Cheung | Aug 1, 2019 | — |
| 50% | “50%” | Alströmer: Word of mouth drove over 50% of Airbnb guests and 70% of hosts | Gustaf Alströmer | Jun 26, 2019 | — |
| 50% | “50%” | Halligan: HubSpot is growing R&D spend by 50% annually | Brian Halligan | May 8, 2019 | Supported |
| 50% | “50%” | Allred: Only 50% of people who bought his $100 book downloaded it | Austen Allred | Apr 3, 2019 | — |
| 50% | “50%” | Brownlee: YouTube ads are 50% of revenue, while sponsors are 20% | Marques Brownlee | Mar 21, 2019 | — |
| 50% | “50%” | Knoop: Goal setting should be split 50/50 between top-down and bottom-up | Mike Knoop | Mar 6, 2019 | — |
| 50% | “50%” | Hoover: Product Hunt Grew 50% Month-over-Month Leading Into YC Application | Ryan Hoover | Feb 15, 2019 | — |
| 50% | “50%” | Hoover: At most 50% of products on Product Hunt are consumer | Ryan Hoover | Feb 15, 2019 | Supported |
| 50% | “50%” | Observing a startup ship rapidly for two weeks drives Hoover's investment decisions | Ryan Hoover | Feb 15, 2019 | — |
| 50% | “50%” | Cindy Mi: VIPKID reduced one-on-one tutoring costs for parents by over 50% | Cindy Mi | Jan 16, 2019 | Supported |
| 50% | “50%” | Dennis: Word-of-mouth drives 45–50% of AptDeco customer acquisition | Kalam Dennis | Dec 14, 2018 | — |
| 50% | “50%” | Werner Vogels: Median latency is useless; engineers must optimize the 99th percentile | Dr. Werner Vogels | Nov 11, 2018 | — |
| 50% | “50%” | Donohue: App downloads drove 40% to 50% of Instapaper's revenue | Brian Donohue | Nov 14, 2018 | — |
| 50% | “50%” | Half of all global air cargo moves on passenger planes | Ryan Petersen | Aug 30, 2018 | Supported |
| 50% | “50%” | Brundage: AI will achieve superhuman performance in StarCraft within three years | Miles Brundage | Apr 25, 2018 | Held up |
| 50% | “50%” | Hoover: Product Hunt grew user visits 50% MoM in early months | Ryan Hoover | Oct 4, 2017 | — |
| 50% | “50%” | DeBaun: About 50% of Blavity content comes from community | Morgan DeBaun | Aug 2, 2017 | — |
| 50% | “50%” | Ralston: Mistreating Failing Founders Destroys Deal Flow and Returns | Geoff Ralston | Feb 7, 2018 | — |
| 50% | “50%” | Manalac: YC prefers funding startups with equal co-founder equity splits | Kat Manalac | Feb 15, 2017 | — |
| 49% | “49%” | Ralston: Unequal equity splits like 51/49 are better to maintain control | Geoff Ralston | Sep 1, 2018 | — |
| 48% | “48%” | Green: Major CPG firm saw word-of-mouth sales jump from 4% to 48% | Kirsten Green | Jun 27, 2025 | — |
| 48% | “48%” | Hale: 63% of 2018 Startup School participants were solo founders | Kevin Hale | Jul 3, 2019 | — |
| 45% | “45%” | Poetiq outperformed Gemini 3 Deep Think on ARC-AGI-2 at half the cost | Ian Fisher | Feb 27, 2026 | Supported |
| 45% | “45%” | 74% of YC dev tool startups have exclusively technical co-founders | Nicolas Dessaigne | Nov 26, 2024 | — |
| 41% | “41%” | Altman: 41% of founders in YC's latest batch were foreign-born | Sam Altman | May 1, 2017 | Supported |
| 40% | “40%” | Truell: AI writes 40% to 50% of all code produced inside Cursor | Michael Truell | Jun 11, 2025 | — |
| 40% | “40%” | Xu: Founders blew 40% of remaining cash refunding late orders | Tony Xu | Mar 26, 2025 | — |
| 40% | “40%” | Thompson: Today's scientists spend 40% of their time on grant paperwork | Derek Thompson | Apr 4, 2025 | Supported |
| 40% | “40%” | Paffenholz: A 40% response rate requires five minutes of personalization per candidate | David Paffenholz | Nov 7, 2025 | — |
| 40% | “40%” | Heller: 30% to 40% of Casetext Employees, Including Coders, Were Lawyers | Jake Heller | Oct 28, 2025 | — |
| 40% | “40%” | Reeves: 40% of US companies faced annual penalties for payroll mistakes | Josh Reeves | Mar 18, 2025 | Supported |
| 40% | “40%” | Seibel says 40% of the Summer 2022 batch applied with only ideas | Michael Seibel | Oct 28, 2022 | — |
| 40% | “40%” | Seibel: The best startup founders choose no action 40% of the time | Michael Seibel | Jul 22, 2022 | — |
| 40% | “40%” | Alströmer: Custom share sheet outperformed native iOS sheet by 40% at Airbnb | Gustaf Alströmer | Aug 15, 2019 | — |
| 40% | “40%” | Hale: Wufoo spent up to 40% of development time on internal tools | Kevin Hale | Mar 6, 2019 | — |
| 40% | “40%” | Forty percent of Front users utilize both shared and individual inboxes | Mathilde Collin | Oct 3, 2018 | — |
| 40% | “40%” | Doshi: Email and text verifications lose 60% to 70% of onboarding users | Suhail Doshi | Sep 12, 2018 | — |
| 40% | “40%” | Capturing 20% of global freight makes a company bigger than Saudi Aramco | Ryan Petersen | Aug 30, 2018 | Contradicted |
| 40% | “40%” | Mitchell: Rezi risked 40% of its available capital on its first deal | Sean Mitchell | May 4, 2018 | — |
| 40% | “40%” | Emily Weiss: Glossier is 77% female with a 40% female tech team | Emily Weiss | Jul 26, 2017 | — |
| 40% | “40%” | Bromberg: Dot-com era VC funds commanded 30% to 40% carried interest | Andy Bromberg | Mar 9, 2018 | Partly supported |
| 40% | “40%” | Thompson: In 2011 Shanghai, 40% corporate growth felt like sandbagging | Avni Patel Thompson | Mar 2, 2018 | — |
| 40% | “40%” | Alex Blumberg estimates 30% to 40% of NPR listeners identify as conservative | Alex Blumberg | Jan 17, 2018 | Partly supported |
| 40% | “40%” | Bartram: Hash tables and BFS represent 40% of tech interview questions | Ammon Bartram | May 17, 2017 | — |
| 39% | “39%” | Gill: Audio recall lasts 36% longer than visual media | Jonathan Gill | May 15, 2019 | Contradicted |
| 35% | “35%” | Nahm: Pre-nurtured candidates get hired 35% faster than cold applicants | Sarah Nahm | Jul 10, 2019 | — |
| 35% | “35%” | Seibel: Founders with under 20% equity post-Series B lack exit motivation | Michael Seibel | Mar 7, 2018 | — |
| 33% | “33%” | Hua: 67% of California lacks local regulations, blocking state cannabis permits | David Hua | Oct 11, 2018 | Supported |
| 31% | “31%” | Epstein: SaaS, transactional, and marketplaces make up 67% of top YC startups | Aaron Epstein | Dec 15, 2022 | Supported |
| 30% | “30%” | Hu: Anthropic Opus 5 achieved 30% on ARC-AGI | Diana Hu | Jul 27, 2026 | Supported |
| 30% | “30%” | Emergent extracts 20% to 30% more performance from models using custom harness | Mukund Jha | Mar 16, 2026 | — |
| 30% | “30%” | Paffenholz: Job descriptions should be at least 30% selling the company | David Paffenholz | Nov 7, 2025 | — |
| 30% | “30%” | Airbnb maintained a minimum technical staff ratio to prevent stalled productivity | Gustaf Alströmer | Oct 21, 2025 | — |
| 30% | “30%” | Reeves: $100B incumbents ADP and Paychex served under 30% of small businesses | Josh Reeves | Mar 18, 2025 | Partly supported |
| 30% | “30%” | Epstein: Marketplaces make up 14% of top YC companies, 30% of value | Aaron Epstein | Dec 15, 2022 | Supported |
| 30% | “30%” | Alströmer: DoorDash maintains 20% monthly user retention after 20 months | Gustaf Alströmer | Aug 15, 2019 | Not publicly verifiable |
| 30% | “30%” | Alströmer: GitHub retains 80% of users after month one and 30% after five years | Gustaf Alströmer | Aug 15, 2019 | — |
| 30% | “30%” | Hua: San Francisco requires a 30% social equity workforce for cannabis | David Hua | Oct 11, 2018 | Contradicted |
| 30% | “30%” | Hale: 2018 Startup School produced over 60 accepted YC companies | Kevin Hale | Jul 3, 2019 | — |
| 30% | “30%” | Bosmeny: Top Salespeople Listen 70% of the Time on Calls | Tyler Bosmeny | Sep 26, 2018 | — |
| 30% | “30%” | Doshi: Email and text verifications lose 60% to 70% of onboarding users | Suhail Doshi | Sep 12, 2018 | — |
| 30% | “30%” | Graham: Better to have 10% of Robert Morris than average full-time founders | Paul Graham | Sep 1, 2018 | — |
| 30% | “30%” | Zeevi: Tripling bread intake did not significantly change gut microbiomes | David Zeevi | Aug 22, 2018 | Supported |
| 30% | “30%” | Zapier saw a 30% applicant surge after announcing its delocation package | Wade Foster | Aug 18, 2017 | — |
| 30% | “30%” | Emily Weiss: Glossier blends editorial judgment with crowdsourced customer feedback | Emily Weiss | Jul 26, 2017 | — |
| 30% | “30%” | Seibel: Only 20% to 30% of YC startups raise follow-on funding | Michael Seibel | Mar 7, 2018 | Partly supported |
| 30% | “30%” | Houston: Viral Loops Drove Half of Early Dropbox Sign-ups | Drew Houston | Feb 23, 2017 | — |
| 29% | “29%” | AptDeco successfully raised its marketplace transaction fees from 10–15% to 19–29% | Reham Fagiri | Dec 14, 2018 | Supported |
| 28% | “28%” | Ravisankar: Over 40% of HackerRank's developer base is in Asia-Pacific | Vivek Ravisankar | Mar 30, 2018 | — |
| 25% | “25%” | Tan: Hard tech startups at YC have surged to 15–25% | Garry Tan | Jul 28, 2026 | Supported |
| 25% | “25%” | Tom Blomfield says AI coding in YC startups surged to 25% | Tom Blomfield | May 9, 2025 | — |
| 25% | “25%” | Taggar: Claude jumped from 5% to 25% market share in YC startups | Harj Taggar | Nov 1, 2024 | — |
| 25% | “25%” | Blomfield: Startups are priced correctly when they lose 25% of deals | Tom Blomfield | Jul 25, 2024 | — |
| 25% | “25%” | Srini: ZeroDown customers earn 0.25% monthly home equity towards purchase | Laks Srini | Dec 11, 2019 | — |
| 25% | “25%” | Altman: Humans lack evolutionary intuition for exponential startup growth | Sam Altman | Mar 6, 2018 | — |
| 25% | “25%” | Zaremba: AlexNet achieved a 15% ImageNet error rate versus competitors' 25% | Wojciech Zaremba | May 17, 2017 | Supported |
| 25% | “25%” | Altman: Founders should spend zero or 25% of time hiring | Sam Altman | Mar 17, 2017 | — |
| 25% | “25%” | Livingston: 25% of the 2014 YC batch startups have female founders | Jessica Livingston | Mar 12, 2014 | Partly supported |
| 23% | “23%” | Hu: Google Gemini adoption in YC batch rose to around 23% | Diana Hu | Dec 22, 2025 | — |
| 22% | “22%” | Epstein: SaaS, transactional, and marketplaces make up 67% of top YC startups | Aaron Epstein | Dec 15, 2022 | Supported |
| 21% | “21%” | Alströmer: DoorDash maintains 20% monthly user retention after 20 months | Gustaf Alströmer | Aug 15, 2019 | Not publicly verifiable |
| 20% | “20%” | Dean: AI startups should target tasks with 1% model success, not 20% | Jeff Dean | Jul 30, 2026 | — |
| 20% | “20%” | Huang: Radiology jobs grew 20% over recent years despite AI scan automation | Jensen Huang | Jul 26, 2026 | Supported |
| 20% | “20%” | Franceschi: Founders Should Build Custom AI Solutions for Unsolved Daily Problems | Pedro Franceschi | Jun 10, 2026 | — |
| 20% | “20%” | Bilgen: BillionToOne Processes Over 600,000 Tests Annually With ~20% Market Share | Ozan Bilgen | Apr 6, 2026 | Supported |
| 20% | “20%” | Bilgen: 20% of early-stage cancer surgery patients retain undetectable microscopic residue | Ozan Bilgen | Apr 6, 2026 | Supported |
| 20% | “20%” | Mukund Jha: Coding is only 20% of shipping software to production | Mukund Jha | Mar 16, 2026 | — |
| 20% | “20%” | Mukund Jha: Roughly 20% of apps built on Emergent are agentic | Mukund Jha | Mar 16, 2026 | — |
| 20% | “20%” | Scaffolding gains get wiped out by next-generation AI models | Boris Cherny | Feb 17, 2026 | — |
| 20% | “20%” | Musk: There is a 10% to 20% chance AI causes annihilation | Elon Musk | Jun 19, 2025 | — |
| 20% | “20%” | Finn: Architectural fix boosted robot language following rate from 20% to 80% | Chelsea Finn | Jul 22, 2025 | Supported |
| 20% | “20%” | Finn: Full Pre-Training Mixture Boosts Robot Performance Over 20% in Novel Homes | Chelsea Finn | Jul 22, 2025 | Supported |
| 20% | “20%” | Redesigning Stripe's post-signup onboarding email increased product conversion by 20 percent | Katie Dill | Oct 16, 2024 | — |
| 20% | “20%” | Blomfield: Top consumer startups get over 80% of growth organically | Tom Blomfield | Jan 6, 2024 | — |
| 20% | “20%” | Blomfield: Retention flattening at 20% beats higher retention decaying to zero | Tom Blomfield | Dec 15, 2023 | — |
| 20% | “20%” | Srini: A 4% mortgage pays off only ~8% principal in 5 years | Laks Srini | Dec 11, 2019 | Partly supported |
| 20% | “20%” | Alströmer: DoorDash maintains 20% monthly user retention after 20 months | Gustaf Alströmer | Aug 15, 2019 | Not publicly verifiable |
| 20% | “20%” | Migicovsky: Ask for user phone numbers at signup to clarify data anomalies | Eric Migicovsky | Jul 25, 2019 | — |
| 20% | “20%” | Rossmann: Up to 75% of elite university students have wealthy parents | Jeremy Rossmann | Jun 19, 2019 | Supported |
| 20% | “20%” | Rossmann: Silicon Valley IPO wealth flows primarily to the top 20% | Jeremy Rossmann | Jun 19, 2019 | — |
| 20% | “20%” | Hockenmaier: A 5% activation boost usually beats a 20% acquisition lift | Dan Hockenmaier | Jun 26, 2019 | — |
| 20% | “20%” | Brownlee: YouTube ads are 50% of revenue, while sponsors are 20% | Marques Brownlee | Mar 21, 2019 | — |
| 20% | “20%” | Poppy's steady monthly growth missed high-growth venture capital marketplace expectations | Avni Patel Thompson | Jan 30, 2019 | — |
| 20% | “20%” | Gil: Compounding 20% monthly organic growth on small bases signals PMF | Elad Gil | Oct 18, 2018 | — |
| 20% | “20%” | As of 2018, Front's workforce was 80% San Francisco and 20% Paris | Mathilde Collin | Oct 3, 2018 | — |
| 20% | “20%” | Schwartz: Startups should target 100% to 200% SEO traffic growth | Eli Schwartz | Sep 27, 2018 | — |
| 20% | “20%” | Seibel: Gamers were 20% of Justin.tv traffic for years before Twitch launched | Michael Seibel | Sep 5, 2018 | — |
| 20% | “20%” | Limit industry veterans to one per team to prevent anti-innovation coalitions | Ryan Petersen | Aug 30, 2018 | — |
| 20% | “20%” | Gil: Didi will become a company worth over $100 billion | Elad Gil | Jul 27, 2018 | Open |
| 20% | “20%” | Thompson: Poppy grew weekly bookings from four to ten across four weeks | Avni Patel Thompson | Sep 21, 2017 | — |
| 20% | “20%” | Ravisankar: Over 40% of HackerRank's developer base is in Asia-Pacific | Vivek Ravisankar | Mar 30, 2018 | — |
| 20% | “20%” | Levy: Typical startup SAFE discount rates range between 10% and 20% | Carolynn Levy | Mar 6, 2018 | Supported |
| 20% | “20%” | Nathoo: Series A leads push pre-money SAFE conversion targeting 20% ownership | Kirsty Nathoo | Mar 6, 2018 | — |
| 20% | “20%” | Seibel: Founders with under 20% equity post-Series B lack exit motivation | Michael Seibel | Mar 7, 2018 | — |
| 20% | “20%” | Bartram: Bay Area candidates have a 10-20% advantage at small startups | Ammon Bartram | May 17, 2017 | — |
| 20% | “20%” | Houston: Viral Loops Drove Half of Early Dropbox Sign-ups | Drew Houston | Feb 23, 2017 | — |
| 16% | “16%” | Donohue: Only 16% of Instapaper URLs appeared on Pinterest on day one | Brian Donohue | Nov 14, 2018 | — |
| 15% | “15%” | Chollet: NDEA Has Only a 10% to 15% Chance of Success | François Chollet | Mar 27, 2026 | — |
| 15% | “15%” | Garry Tan: Up to 90% of Current Y Combinator Startups Are AI | Garry Tan | Apr 4, 2025 | — |
| 15% | “15%” | Taggar: 15% of the YC batch adopted OpenAI's o1 before public release | Harj Taggar | Nov 1, 2024 | — |
| 15% | “15%” | Blomfield: 5% monthly growth is unlikely to yield breakout consumer success | Tom Blomfield | Jan 6, 2024 | — |
| 15% | “15%” | Srini: ZeroDown customers earn 0.25% monthly home equity towards purchase | Laks Srini | Dec 11, 2019 | — |
| 15% | “15%” | Srini: ZeroDown is cheaper than renting after factoring in purchase credits | Laks Srini | Dec 11, 2019 | — |
| 15% | “15%” | Chinese families spend 15% of income on supplemental education versus US's 2% | Cindy Mi | Jan 16, 2019 | Partly supported |
| 15% | “15%” | AptDeco successfully raised its marketplace transaction fees from 10–15% to 19–29% | Reham Fagiri | Dec 14, 2018 | Supported |
| 15% | “15%” | Donohue: Apple's Free App promo beat Instapaper's prior two-year downloads | Brian Donohue | Nov 14, 2018 | — |
| 15% | “15%” | Zaremba: AlexNet achieved a 15% ImageNet error rate versus competitors' 25% | Wojciech Zaremba | May 17, 2017 | Supported |
| 14% | “14%” | Epstein: SaaS, transactional, and marketplaces make up 67% of top YC startups | Aaron Epstein | Dec 15, 2022 | Supported |
| 14% | “14%” | Epstein: Marketplaces make up 14% of top YC companies, 30% of value | Aaron Epstein | Dec 15, 2022 | Supported |
| 12% | “12%” | Chou: About 12% of the current YC batch uses Ploy | Bryant Chou | Jun 19, 2026 | — |
| 12% | “12%” | Friedman: 50% of YC startups use Cursor while only 12% use GitHub Copilot | Jared Friedman | Nov 1, 2024 | — |
| 12% | “12%” | Global logistics accounts for roughly 12% of the world's GDP | Ryan Petersen | Aug 30, 2018 | Supported |
| 10% | “10%” | Tan: Hard tech startups at YC have surged to 15–25% | Garry Tan | Jul 28, 2026 | Supported |
| 10% | “10%” | Ries: Foundation-owned companies are 6x more likely to reach year 50 | Eric Ries | May 22, 2026 | Partly supported |
| 10% | “10%” | Vuong: Solving general robotics could add 10% to the US GDP | Quan Vuong | Apr 16, 2026 | — |
| 10% | “ten percent” | Chollet: Base LLMs Score Under 10% on ARC-AGI-1 | François Chollet | Mar 27, 2026 | Supported |
| 10% | “10%” | Cherny: Claude Code wrote only 10 percent of his code at launch | Boris Cherny | Feb 17, 2026 | — |
| 10% | “10%” | Chollet: Scaling LLMs 50,000x Only Lifted ARC Accuracy to 10% | François Chollet | Jul 3, 2025 | Supported |
| 10% | “10%” | Jumper: AlphaFold made structural biology 5% to 10% faster | John Jumper | Jul 15, 2025 | — |
| 10% | “10%” | Joseph: Sparsely linked long-tail data may be most valuable for frontier AI | Nick Joseph | Sep 30, 2025 | — |
| 10% | “10%” | Englander: Ten percent of top global financial firms use Model ML | Chas Englander | Jul 31, 2025 | — |
| 10% | “10%” | Public software firms spend 50% more on sales for less new ARR | Parker Conrad | Jan 10, 2025 | Supported |
| 10% | “10%” | Founders should expect to throw away 90% of their early startup code | Nicolas Dessaigne | Nov 26, 2024 | — |
| 10% | “10%” | Blomfield: 5% monthly growth is unlikely to yield breakout consumer success | Tom Blomfield | Jan 6, 2024 | — |
| 10% | “10%” | Seibel: 5% to 10% founder salary bumps are almost always worth it | Michael Seibel | Jul 22, 2022 | — |
| 10% | “10%” | Adora Cheung: Top YC Demo Day startups grow 5% to 10% weekly | Adora Cheung | Aug 1, 2019 | — |
| 10% | “10%” | Hale: Needing over 10% market share for $100M revenue is implausible | Kevin Hale | Jul 3, 2019 | — |
| 10% | “10%” | Alströmer: Only 10% of Airbnb homepage visitors had booking intent | Gustaf Alströmer | Jun 26, 2019 | — |
| 10% | “10%” | Typical Meesho resellers earn $150 to $200 monthly | Vidit Aatrey | May 22, 2019 | — |
| 10% | “10%” | Poppy's steady monthly growth missed high-growth venture capital marketplace expectations | Avni Patel Thompson | Jan 30, 2019 | — |
| 10% | “10%” | Khosla: Every part of GDP can achieve 100% to 1,000% resource improvements | Vinod Khosla | Jan 9, 2019 | — |
| 10% | “10%” | Doshi: Having ~1.4 DAUs per account reduced Mixpanel's dollar churn below 10% | Suhail Doshi | Sep 12, 2018 | — |
| 10% | “10%” | Graham: Better to have 10% of Robert Morris than average full-time founders | Paul Graham | Sep 1, 2018 | — |
| 10% | “10%” | Zeevi: Tripling bread intake did not significantly change gut microbiomes | David Zeevi | Aug 22, 2018 | Supported |
| 10% | “10%” | Petersen: About 10% of Flexport shipments go to Amazon warehouses | Ryan Petersen | Aug 30, 2018 | — |
| 10% | “10%” | Petersen sold his Amazon stock right before it 4x'd to buy a house | Ryan Petersen | Aug 30, 2018 | — |
| 10% | “10%” | Ravisankar: HackerRank has 3.4M developers, over 10% of global total | Vivek Ravisankar | Mar 30, 2018 | — |
| 10% | “10%” | Nathoo: Closing Option Pools in Priced Rounds Are Usually Around 10% | Kirsty Nathoo | Mar 6, 2018 | Supported |
| 10% | “10%” | Altman: Founders should give 10% equity to first 10 employees | Sam Altman | Mar 17, 2017 | — |
| 10% | “10%” | Fagiri: In-house delivery grew AptDeco word-of-mouth from 10% to 70% | Reham Fagiri | Oct 11, 2016 | — |
| 10% | “10%” | Musk: I gave SpaceX less than 10% chance of success when starting | Elon Musk | Sep 15, 2016 | — |
| 10% | “10%” | Nathu: Startup co-founders should generally split equity more or less equally | Kirsty Nathoo | Feb 23, 2015 | — |
| 9% | “Nine percent” | Wessel: Under 9% of internships on WayUp are unpaid | Liz Wessel | May 31, 2018 | — |
| 8% | “eight percent” | Taggar: Llama market share in YC startups grew from 0% to 8% | Harj Taggar | Nov 1, 2024 | — |
| 8% | “eight percent” | Srini: A 4% mortgage pays off only ~8% principal in 5 years | Laks Srini | Dec 11, 2019 | Partly supported |
| 7.6% | “7.6%” | Ralston: Angel Investing Is a Game of Big Wins, Not 7.6% Returns | Geoff Ralston | Feb 7, 2018 | — |
| 7% | “seven percent” | Massad: Seven percent week-over-week growth is ideal for bootstrapping product lines | Amjad Masad | Apr 25, 2026 | — |
| 7% | “seven percent” | A 7% monthly churn rate compounds to a 58% annual revenue loss | Suhail Doshi | Sep 12, 2018 | Supported |
| 7% | “seven percent” | Manalac: YC offers only standard deal terms of $120K for 7% | Kat Manalac | Feb 15, 2017 | — |
| 6.1% | “6.1%” | Garry Tan: CS majors face higher unemployment than art history majors | Garry Tan | Jul 8, 2025 | Supported |
| 5% | “five percent” | Code-based reasoning strategies boosted Gemini 1.5 Flash performance from 5% to 95% | Ian Fisher | Feb 27, 2026 | Not publicly verifiable |
| 5% | “five percent” | Palicha: 70% of Zepto markets profitable, mature markets at 4-5% EBITDA | Aadit Palicha | Apr 18, 2025 | — |
| 5% | “five percent” | Joseph: LLM training requires collaborative infrastructure work over publishable research papers | Nick Joseph | Sep 30, 2025 | — |
| 5% | “five percent” | Field: 5% of Figma Design files were slides before dedicated product launched | Dylan Field | Aug 8, 2025 | — |
| 5% | “five percent” | Taggar: Claude jumped from 5% to 25% market share in YC startups | Harj Taggar | Nov 1, 2024 | — |
| 5% | “five percent” | Epstein: A 5% difference in monthly retention determines startup survival | Aaron Epstein | Dec 15, 2022 | — |
| 5% | “five percent” | Epstein: Stripe initially tested value by charging 5% per transaction | Aaron Epstein | Dec 15, 2022 | Supported |
| 5% | “Five percent” | Blomfield: 5% monthly growth is unlikely to yield breakout consumer success | Tom Blomfield | Jan 6, 2024 | — |
| 5% | “five percent” | Rossmann: MOOCs have an industry standard completion rate of 2% to 5% | Jeremy Rossmann | Jun 19, 2019 | Supported |
| 5% | “five percent” | Hockenmaier: A 5% activation boost usually beats a 20% acquisition lift | Dan Hockenmaier | Jun 26, 2019 | — |
| 5% | “five percent” | Hockenmaier: Monetization experiments require long-term five percent holdout groups | Dan Hockenmaier | Jun 26, 2019 | — |
| 5% | “five percent” | Caldwell: Consumer startups make up only about 5% of YC's portfolio | Dalton Caldwell | Feb 15, 2019 | Contradicted |
| 5% | “five percent” | Mixpanel and Slack both converted 4-5% of landing page visits to signups | Suhail Doshi | Sep 12, 2018 | — |
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