On: 37 YC Companies have valuations of or been sold fo...

[brotchie]

In academia there's an author metric called the H-index

> A scientist has index h if h of his/her Np papers have at least h citations each, and the other (Np − h) papers have no more than h citations each.

I wonder if you could apply this same methodology to VC (the v-index)

> A VC firm has index v if v of his/her Nc funded companies have had valuations of at least $v million, and the other (Nc − v) funded companies have had valuations of no more than $v million. (In some inflation adjusted dollars.)

$mm 0 0 0 0 5 10 10 15 22

v-index = 5

$mm 2 4 4 5 8 8 8 10 14 17 20 22 25 50 55 60 100 200

v-index = 10

Python snippit for calculation.

    def vindex(valuations):
        return max(v if sum(x >= v for x in valuations) >= v else 0 for v in range(len(valuations)))

[jessriedel → brotchie]

Your metric uses the arbitrary unit of 1 million dollars/company. The h-metric uses the imperfect but substantially less arbitrary unit of a citation/paper.

[brotchie → brotchie]

From another comment:

> pg says in a later tweet reply [1] that it is 37 out of 511.

So ycombinator's v-index is likely 37.