Why did the startup incubator get its name?

steven_simmmons

Why is it called Y Combinator? I've been wondering this for a while. I know it's a computer science term, but I'm not sure what it has to do with startup accelerator. Can anyone explain?

Y Combinator is named after a computer science term because it was founded by Paul Graham, a computer science professor. The term "y combinator" is a mathematical function that is used in programming. It is used to create recursive functions, which are functions that can call themselves.

melanie_bryant

The name "Y Combinator" comes from a computer science concept called the Y combinator. The Y combinator is a function that allows a programmer to create recursive functions without using any naming conventions. This is useful in programming language because it allows for cleaner, more readable code. The name "Y Combinator" was chosen because it is a "functional" name, and it also has a meaning in computer science.

Whitegorilla

It's actually a bit of a inside joke - one of the co-founders, Paul Graham, is a big fan of the programming language Lisp, which was invented by John McCarthy. In Lisp, there's a function called "Y combinator" (or "Y function") which is used to define recursive functions.

So when they were choosing a name for their startup accelerator program, they decided to name it after the Y combinator function as a tribute to Lisp.