Y Combinator, a seed-stage investment fund, announced this week that it raised $2 million from Sequoia Capital, and angel investors.
The fund, which has invested in 40 startups per year, plans to accelerate its investment pace by 50% and get investments up to 60 this year.

The fund typically invests between $5,000 plus $5,000n (where n is the number of participating founders). For example, if there are two founders, the startup receives $15,000. In return, Y Combinator takes between 2% and 10% of the company. 

By investing in the seed-stage fund, Sequoia - which has made a killing backing Google, Yahoo and YouTube - will get access to these smaller startups. The prominent angels that invested in this round with Sequoia include Paul Buchheit, Aydin Senkut and Ron Conway. 

Y Combinator has had a good track record. Among some startups it's backed, are Reddit, which was bought by Conde Nast in 2006 and Xobni, which recently raised $7 million from Cisco. Other startups it's invested in include: ClickFacts, TextPayMe, Snipshot, Inkling Markets, Wufoo, LikeBetter, Thinkature, JamGlue, Scribd, Weebly, Virtualmin, Buxfer, Octopart, Heysan, Justin.TV, I'm In Like With You, SocialMoth, Xobni, Zecter, Adpinion, Anywhere.FM, Fuzzwich, Bountii, Songkick, Auctomatic, Disqus, Draftmix, Appjet, Webmynd, RescueTime, Reble, Heroku, Tipjoy, Addmired, Socialbrowse, Kirkland North, Wundrbar, Chatterous, Mixwit, Snaptalent, Clickpass, Insoshi, MightyQuiz, 280 North, Dropbox, Posterous, Anyvite, Slinkset, TicketStumbler, PopCuts, Ididwork, Startuply, Picwing, CO2Stats, PollEverywhere, Backtype, ContestMachine, Frogmetrics, Snipd, ZumoDrive, and Heyzap.

(Image source:  erickarjaluoto.com)