- General
- August 15, 2018
- 4 minutes read
Y Combinator is setting up a Chinese arm with former Baidu executive as CEO
Automattic (WordPress Parent company) Founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg speaks at a YC event Y Combinator Renowned startup incubator Y…
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| Automattic (WordPress Parent company) Founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg speaks at a YC event
Y Combinator
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Renowned startup incubator Y Combinator has announced its move to launch in the Chinese region with its CEO Sam Altman detailing in a recent post of a program dubbed YC China being established in the region with Former Yahoo, Microsoft and Baidu alum Qi Lu heading the effort in the new location.
Qi is also taking the position of Head of YC Research, The incubator’s non-profit research lab as he oversees its Chinese ventures as a Founding CEO.
The San Francisco based incubator known for churning out several major alumni startups including Airbnb, Dropbox, Stripe, Twitch, Docker, Quora, Rigetti Computing among many others is also establishing a new research location in Seattle as part of its move to drive more innovation.
Quoting YC CEO Sam Altman, “Our mission at YC is to enable more innovation than any other company in the world, and to ensure that the benefits of that are fairly spread throughout humanity. We believe that technology drives innovation, that startups can do very ambitious things if they think on a long enough time horizon, and that hackers can change the world.”
“Qi embodies all of these values, and China has been an important missing piece of our puzzle—the entrepreneurial energy and talent there is an amazing force. Qi will be able to take what makes YC work and adapt it for China.”
For now, There’s no actual set time for when its Chinese program will launch but the incubator is working to do this as soon as possible with its CEO Altman confirming it would run independently although it may work along with local partners.
With the Chinese startup ecosystem growing rapidly and heavily in recent times, It makes Y Combinator is taking its incubation program to the region to tap into the market providing networks and funding for startups in the region as they scale operations.
Altman said “We think that a significant percentage of the largest technology companies that are founded in the next decade—companies at the scale of Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook—will be based in the US and China. YC’s greatest strength is our founder community and with the launch of YC China we believe we have a special opportunity to include many more Chinese founders in our global community.”
