Foundertrace – chain of YC startups founded by its employees
Inspired by PG’s tweet about a chain of 4 YC startups where the founder worked at a YC startup, I vibe coded and generated these genealogy chains for all ~6k YC startups. And to make these trees easily accessible I packaged them into a hosted webapp. Few noteworthy YC startups which have had huge impact in YC ecosystem Airbnb - 83 YC startups spawned Stripe - 67 YC startups spawned Dropbox - 50 YC startups spawned Justin.tv/Twitch - 47 YC startups spawned More recently founded YC startups which have spawned a lot more YC startups Rappi - 21 YC startups spawned Brex - 20 YC startups…
Foundertrace – chain of YC startups founded by its employees launched on January 3, 2026 with 39 votes, #588 of 14,584 launches that month and more than 95% of that year's launches.
In plain words
Foundertrace is a web application that maps the genealogy of Y Combinator startups, showing chains where founders worked at other YC companies before starting their own. It tracks all approximately 6,000 YC startups and visualizes which ones spawned the most new ventures, with Airbnb leading at 83 descendants, followed by Stripe at 67 and Dropbox at 50. The tool helps users explore the interconnected network of YC-backed entrepreneurs and their career trajectories.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
PG tweeted: "I bet 3 founder generations is not the record. Anyone know of a longer chain?" Challenge accepted. FounderTrace maps the entire YC founder genealogy — 6,000+ companies, showing who worked where before founding what. Discover 4-generation chains, see which startups are "founder factories" (Stripe alone spawned 50+ YC companies), and explore the family trees of tech's most successful companies. Vibe coded with Crustdata APIs. Free. No signup.
Chain of YC startups founded by its employees. Explore the founder family trees.
In the maker’s words, at launch
Inspired by PG’s tweet about a chain of 4 YC startups where the founder worked at a YC startup, I vibe coded and generated these genealogy chains for all ~6k YC startups. And to make these trees easily accessible I packaged them into a hosted webapp. Few noteworthy YC startups which have had huge impact in YC…
Does a similar job
all alternatives →
Y Combinator Co-founder Matching2021 · ycombinator.com · ▲642YC’s free online platform to help you find your co-founder
The Y Combinator Database2017 · ycdb.co · ▲866The definitive database of YC companies with all the metrics
YC Companies Map2025 · yc.foundersaround.com · ▲180A map of YC companies around the world. Discover YC startups by city, batch, and industry. Powered by FoundersAround.
Work at a Startup – Find a Job at a YC Company2017 · workatastartup.com · ▲210Find startup jobs at the best YC startups and connect with founders on Y Combinator's Work at a Startup.
Startup School for Future Founders2020 · startupschool.org · ▲510YC's free 6-week program for aspiring founders
Source: Show HN post ↗ · launch text quoted in part
Launched alongside, January 2026
the whole month →- IN
Hey HN! I wanted to share something I built over the last few weeks: isometric.nyc is a massive isometric pixel art map of NYC, built with nano banana and coding agents. I didn't write a single line of code. Of course no-code doesn't mean no-engineering. This project took a lot more manual labor than I'd hoped! I wrote a deep dive on the workflow and some thoughts about the future of AI coding and creativity: http://cannoneyed.com/projects/isometric-nyc
AI · Jan 2026 · cannoneyed.com
Automatic AI-powered code reviews the moment you open a PR
Dev tools · Jan 2026 · kilo.ai
