Sources & verification notes

#How to read this module

Same discipline this platform applies everywhere it makes a claim it can't fully stand behind: name the source, tier it honestly, and — where a specific widely-repeated figure could not be traced to anything resembling a primary disclosure — say so explicitly rather than let it stand unchallenged. This is the same treatment MBB gives the untraceable MBB-recruiting pass-rate table, and the same treatment Income Playbooks and AI Agency give their own fabricated statistics.

#Established — confirmed directly against a primary source

• ycombinator.com/deal and ycombinator.com/about — YC's own current standard investment terms: $500,000 total ($125,000 for a fixed 7% post-money SAFE, $375,000 on an uncapped MFN SAFE), no milestone contingency, no fees to companies, pro rata rights, eligible-jurisdiction list. Checked directly against both pages; identical figures confirmed on both.
• ycombinator.com/apply — YC's own stated Fall 2026 application deadline, decision-notification date, interview format and window, and batch program description (three-day kickoff, weekly GP meetings, ongoing post-batch support).
• Garry Tan's public statements on YC's acceptance rate and the move to four batches a year — reported directly by TechCrunch (September 2024) and Crain's New York Business, attributing specific figures (roughly 0.8%–1% acceptance, partner capacity as the stated constraint) and rationale (timing flexibility, pace of AI-driven company formation) directly to YC's own president.
• The February 2021 Goldman Sachs junior-analyst working-conditions survey — its specific figures (105-hour week, 98-hour average, 8.8→2.8 mental-health rating, 9.0→2.3 physical-health rating, 13 respondents) confirmed identically across independent reporting by CNN, Forbes, and CNBC, each covering the same leaked internal document; CEO David Solomon's own public response (Saturday-rule enforcement, additional hiring) reported by the same outlets.
• Jamie Dimon's "unethical" statement on PE on-cycle recruiting, made at Georgetown University and reported by Fortune and multiple other named outlets, plus JPMorgan's own follow-through policy (termination risk for analysts accepting future-dated offers or interviewing within their first 18 months).
• Andrew Metrick and Ayako Yasuda, "The Economics of Private Equity Funds" (Rodney White Center Working Paper 17-07, Wharton) — the 2%/20% fee norm, the formal hurdle-rate/catch-up waterfall mechanics and worked numerical example.
• Steven Kaplan and Antoinette Schoar, "Private Equity Performance: Returns, Persistence, and Capital Flows" (The Journal of Finance, 2005; originally circulated as an NBER working paper) — historical fund-level net-of-fee performance and cross-fund persistence findings.
• Michael Jensen, "Eclipse of the Public Corporation" (Harvard Business Review, 1989) — the debt-discipline/free-cash-flow argument for leveraged buyout structure.
• The sell-side/buy-side and LBO/SAFE structural mechanics throughout this course (three-statement identities, valuation methodology, LBO return math, SAFE conversion logic) — these follow from standard, verifiable financial-accounting and deal-structure definitions rather than resting on any one source's authority.

#Directional — a consistent pattern across multiple independent secondary sources, not confirmed against one primary disclosure

• The IB target-school tiering (a top cluster — Wharton, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, and similar — receiving the heaviest recruiting presence, a second broader tier below it) — synthesized from Poets&Quants' LinkedIn-data-based feeder-school reporting, Mergers & Inquisitions, and multiple university career-center pages; explicitly not confirmed against any bank's own published list, because no bank was found to publish one.
• The resume/GPA screening pattern (fast, heuristic, ~3.5–3.7 practically observed floor, offsettable by other signals) and the summer-to-full-time conversion-rate ranges (70–90% bulge bracket, 80–90% elite boutique, 60–85% middle market) — consistent across career-prep aggregators (igotanoffer.com, wallstreetplaybook.org, and similar), not confirmed against any bank's own disclosed conversion figures.
• The technical and behavioral interview content and emphasis described in Module 03 — consistent across finance-training vendors (Training the Street, Wall Street Prep) and recruiter-facing guidance, not confirmed against any bank's own published interview rubric.
• The post-2021 IB hours picture (70–80 hours in normal periods despite reforms) — consistent across post-2021 industry reporting, but weaker evidence than the single well-documented 2021 survey itself.
• The on-cycle PE recruiting timeline and its year-over-year acceleration, and the named headhunting firms (Henkel Search Partners, CPI, Amity Search Partners, Ratio Advisors, SG Partners, Dynamics Search Partners, Gold Coast Search Partners) — consistent across multiple independent PE-recruiting guides, not confirmed against any headhunting firm's own client roster.
• The "PE recruits from IB because banking pre-trains and pre-screens the needed skills" mechanism — a consistent characterization across practitioner sources, not a stated policy from any PE firm.
• PE and VC junior compensation ranges (PE associate base/all-in; VC associate base/bonus; carry allocation percentages and vesting patterns at both) — consistent across compensation-survey aggregators (Wall Street Careers, Wall Street Oasis's own salary guide among them), not confirmed against any individual fund's own disclosed pay data.
• The Correlation Ventures 21,000-financing outcome distribution and the Horsley Bridge/a16z 7,000-investment dataset (see Module 08) — both are the originating firm's own published, disclosed-methodology analysis, which this course treats as a strong operator-level source rather than an independently audited academic dataset; both also reflect historical sample windows (2004–2013 and 1985–2014 respectively) rather than the current market.
• Ilya Strebulaev's published findings on VC investor concentration (fewer than 40% of investors ever credited with a successful investment; ~90% of profits from ~5% of investors) — Strebulaev is a genuine tier-2 academic researcher in this specific field, but this course encountered these figures through his broader public research output and press coverage of it rather than independently verifying one specific peer-reviewed paper line by line.
• The comparative IB/PE/VC hours ordering in Module 11 (IB worst, PE middle, VC best) — the direction is consistent across every source checked, but none of the three figures individually carries evidentiary weight comparable to the 2021 Goldman survey.
• The "VC recruiting has no standard pipeline, hiring is fund-cycle- and attrition-driven" pattern, and the small-team-size rules of thumb (~3 investment professionals per $100M of fund size) — consistent across VC-recruiting guides and fund-structure commentary, not a single authoritative industry census.
• Fred Wilson's stated view (AVC blog, and reported interviews) that there is no standard path into VC and that operating experience before investing is the stronger route — a genuine long-tenured operator-practitioner's own stated position, not an industry consensus finding.

#Speculative — single-source claims, no stated methodology, or claims this research flags rather than repeats

• The claim that "85% of new banking analysts leave investment banking within their first two years" — traced in this research to a single Substack post with no cited source, sample size, or methodology behind the figure. The broader point it gestures at (first-two-year IB attrition is genuinely high) is plausible and consistent with the hours data in Module 04, but this specific number should not be repeated as fact.
• Any precise current-year "on-cycle PE recruiting starts in [specific month]" claim — the acceleration trend itself is well corroborated (see Directional, above), but the exact month or week shifts meaningfully year to year and firm to firm, and several firms have publicly reversed course on their own timelines in response to the Dimon/JPMorgan controversy. Treat any specific current-season date this course or any other source states as a snapshot, not a stable planning fact.
• Precise current YC application-volume figures — reported anywhere from roughly 15,000 to over 40,000 applications per cycle depending on the source and the specific batch cited, with no single reconciled figure found; YC's own president has stated an approximate acceptance-rate range (0.8%–1%, with one specific batch reported separately at 0.6%) without disclosing the exact applicant count each rate was computed against in the sources checked for this course. Treat the acceptance-rate range as Established (it's Garry Tan's own stated figure) and the specific denominator behind any single percentage as unconfirmed.
• Specific numeric IB summer-internship conversion rates for any single named bank in the current year — the ranges cited in Module 02 are directional aggregator estimates; no bank in this research was found to publish its own conversion rate.

#What this means practically

Where this course states a specific number as fact, it's in the Established list above or explicitly caveated inline as Directional. Every figure in the Speculative list appears in the wider IB/PE/VC recruiting-content ecosystem framed as settled fact; this research could not confirm any of them against a primary source, and this module exists so a reader who encounters one of these numbers elsewhere — in a coaching program's marketing, a headhunter's pitch, a forum post — recognizes it rather than treating it as more solid than it is.