About Jared Tame

Studied advertising and computer science at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, graduates in 2011 Y Combinator alumni from the Summer 2009 batch; cofounded GraffitiGeo, which was later acquired by Loopt in 2009. First Silicon Valley experience was joining TokBox as employee
  • Studied advertising and computer science at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, graduates in 2011
  • Y Combinator alumni from the Summer 2009 batch; cofounded GraffitiGeo, which was later acquired by Loopt in 2009.
  • First Silicon Valley experience was joining TokBox as employee #1 during sophomore year (2007). Later worked at One Llama and Illinois Ventures. Started 2 UIUC student entrepreneur groups: UBD (an ACM SIG) and IEN.
  • Proud owner of github.com/god although unfortunately doesn’t possess any supernatural powers
  • Enjoys designing and coding
  • Total sucker for gaming (Protoss ftw). I’m a Huskateer.
  • Favorite side project is Hacker News Directory, where students can find other students from their schools who read Hacker News.
  • Maintains a personal blog at posterous
  • Has an awesome girlfriend who is equally nerdy and sells handmade jewelry on Etsy.

Book stats overview

    • 33 total companies interviewed
    • Companies have collectively raised $90 million
    • 60% of companies interviewed are funded by Y Combinator, which represents 8% of all Y Combinator companies as of 2011 (20 total)
    • 63% founders are programmers (21)
    • 30% of founders are tagged as ‘businessperson‘ meaning they most likely aren’t programmers or writing code
    • 18% of founders are designers (6)
    • 18% of companies are acquired, or founders have had previously acquired companies before their current startup (6)
    • 24% of founders worked jobs to generate income while they were in school (8)
    • 45% of founders started their startups as undergraduate students
    • 67% of companies are hiring (22)
    • 21% of founders are dropouts (7)
    • 42% of founders are profitable, either Ramen profitable or profitable enough to pay salaries and cover business expenses (14)
    • 76% of founders are funded, either VC funded or received funding from angels (Y Combinator seed funding is not counted in this figure) (25)
    • 6% of founders attended an Ivy League school (2)
    • 27% of founders are major league players, so most of them are within the top 1,000 ranked sites by traffic in the U.S. according to Alexa (9)
    • 24% of founders were coincidental, meaning they had no idea they would be starting a startup (9)
    • Only 2 founders are solo founders


Jared Tame.

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