You asked about Design Tools
29 people built something like it. 5 are gone.
That is 24% of the ones whose fate we could settle, against 23% across the whole register. 8 were acquired.
| Launched | What it was | Today |
|---|---|---|
| 2014-01-01 | YCAlgolia A developer-friendly and enterprise-grade search API. · algolia.com | still up |
| 2022-02-10 | emailkick.com | still up |
| 2021-01-01 | YCMindee AI Document Understanding API · mindee.com | still up |
| 2020-06-01 | YCDecentro API Platform for Banking Integrations (Plaid for India and APAC) · decentro.tech | still up |
| 2011-01-01 | YCMailgun Email API service. · mailgun.net | acquired |
| 2023-01-01 | YCFern Instantly offer SDKs and API Docs · buildwithfern.com | acquired |
| 2021-01-01 | API for developers and AIs to access health data · tryterra.co | still up |
| 2020-06-01 | YCSeam API for IoT Devices · seam.co | still up |
| 2022-01-01 | YCTheneo Stripe-like API Docs in just a few clicks · theneo.io | still up |
| 2019-06-01 | YCRutter The Unified API for Business Financial Data · rutter.com | still up |
| 2014-01-01 | YCWit.ai Natural Language for Developers --Wit is an API that makes it easy… · wit.ai | acquired |
| 2020-01-01 | YCWeav Weav is the universal API for commerce platforms · weav.co | acquired |
| 2023-03-23 | img.ly | still up |
| 2023-01-01 | YCNango A single API for all your integrations · nango.dev | still up |
| 2020-01-01 | YCEnveloop Design and send messages from your app with a simple API. · enveloop.com | gone |
| 2019-06-01 | Turn any website into an API · dashblock.com | gone |
| 2022-01-01 | API for shared embeddable web browsers · hyperbeam.com | still up |
| 2023-06-01 | The API for LLM tool use · opentools.com | still up |
| 2024-01-01 | API For PDF Document Workflows · fileforge.com | gone |
| 2025-01-01 | YCReJot We turn complex API integrations into drop‑in full‑stack libraries · rejot.dev | still up |
| 2019-06-01 | YCBouncer SDK for scanning and verifying credit cards and photo IDs in mobile… · getbouncer.com | acquired |
| 2019-01-01 | YCBasilica Basilica is an API that embeds high-dimensional data like images and… · basilica.ai | gone |
| 2018-06-01 | YCOneGraph GraphQL API to connect all of the internet's APIs. Join us at Netlify! · onegraph.com | acquired |
| 2022-01-01 | Open-source API & UI test automation · karatelabs.io | still up |
| 2024-06-01 | YCPinnacle API & SDK for RCS (the next-generation of texting) · pinnacle.sh | still up |
| 2018-01-01 | YCNewCraft Universal API for HR & Payroll · newcraft.io | acquired |
| 2017-01-01 | The Universal API · scaphold.io | acquired |
| 2022-01-01 | YCSendo The best SMS/RCS API for startups · sendo.dev | gone |
| 2021-01-01 | YCWaypoint The email API built for product teams · usewaypoint.com | still up |
How this compares
Y Combinator reports its own outcomes, including acquisitions. The other two are judged by asking the domain, so they are not measured the same way and are never averaged together.
The register re-probes every domain it holds. Some that answered last month stop answering. We send that list — what went quiet, and what it was — once a month. Nothing else.
How this was made. Show HN entries are every post from 2021 to 2023 with at least five points that linked to its own domain; code hosts and free hosting are excluded, because a repository outlives the effort behind it. Product Hunt entries needed 100 votes — a far higher bar, so they are the promoted top slice rather than a like-for-like sample. Both are judged by asking the domain whether it still answers: gone means it no longer resolves, refuses the connection, serves a parking page, or says plainly that it shut down. An HTTP error is not counted as gone — a server answering 404 is one somebody still pays for, and an audit of 25 gone-calls found two such sites alive with only a moved homepage. Y Combinator entries use the status YC publishes itself, which is why only those can say acquired. Squatted domains — a lapsed name now serving somebody else's site — are not detected, so these figures run slightly low.