Why do so many YC startups have similar branding?
I've noticed that a lot of startups coming out of YC have very similar branding styles—minimalist logos, simple color schemes, clean websites, etc. Is there a specific reason for this? Do YC companies receive branding guidance as part of the accelerator program, or is it just a coincidence? Curious if anyone here has insight into why this trend exists and whether it's intentional or just a byproduct of current design trends.
One trend I see here is when a free tool gets good enough and becomes popular like bootstrap last decade or tailwind this one. Once popular these make consistent jumping off points for more tools (daisyui/shadui/tremor, undraw/unsplash/pexels) and examples and suddenly LOTS of new sites all have one of the base tailwind layouts, one of the default tailwind color schemes, stock images from unsplash/pexels, chartjs graphs, and those people clipart by undraw. Once you know about those tools you start to see them everywhere.
I don't think this is necessarily bad - I make a lot of sites or mockups with exactly this approach when a unique (ie, expensive) design isn't a game changer since that can always come later.
I think it's the second one. I've seen several articles about similar logos and typography taking over all kinds of businesses, not just YC ones. Sometimes these are even rebrands that make the original logo worse.