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We’re excited to welcome Aaron Epstein to the YC Team, and welcome back Harj Taggar. After four batches as a Visiting Partner, Aaron Epstein is joining YC as a partner. MORE
Over the last few days, a large number of investors have accelerated their outreach to our current batch of founders. They are moving quickly to make investment decisions, and we’re going to match their pace and accelerate our schedule by one week. YC W20 online Demo Day will now be on March 16. MORE
In the early stages of working on a startup, there is little time to spend on areas other than product development and talking to users. However, as you start to hire people and build a team, there are HR fundamentals worth investing in. MORE
I got a chance to interview Jack Forbes, CEO of Faros * (YC W19). He shares his experiences moonlighting as an intern at HigherMe (YC W15), playing soccer with YC founders & partners, and what drove him to start a YC company — even after being rejected. MORE
Michael Babineau is cofounder and CEO of Second Measure. Second Measure analyzes billions of credit card transactions to answer real-time questions on consumer behavior. They were in the Summer 2015 batch of YC and you can check them out at SecondMeasure.com. Kevin Hale is a Partner at YC. Before working at YC he cofounded Wufoo. You can find Michael on Twitter @mikebabineau and Kevin is @ilikevests. Topics. 00:00 – What idea did Mike apply to YC with? MORE
We’ve nearly doubled the number of YC startups looking for interns this summer, and the companies & roles are posted on Work at a Startup ! As a reminder, the YC internship program gives current undergrad and grad students the opportunity to find a great YC-backed and vetted startup. MORE
I’m delighted to announce that Geoff Ralston is taking over for me as President of YC. I’ve known Geoff for almost ten years, he’s been a YC partner for eight, and I think he’s one of the most thoughtful, helpful, and kind investors in Silicon Valley. One of my earliest memories of Geoff is him laying on the floor of the first Stripe office helping the founders redline a contract for hours. MORE
In 2018, Pew Research Center reported that 57% of Americans believe that children in America today will be worse off financially than their parents. Since 2013, this number has been as high as 65% — even though we are experiencing our 10th straight year of economic growth. We believe this mindset is the result of increased family debt, stagnant wages, and a lack of government commitment to provide equal access to the basic services families need to thrive. MORE
We’re excited to announce the next iteration of Startup School. The 8-week course will launch on January 20, 2020, and you can sign up to participate here ! We were floored by the quality (and quantity) of founders who participated in Startup School 2019. Our deepest thanks go to the founders who worked with us to make the program great. MORE
As part of our efforts to further support founders in Startup School , we awarded $15,000 in equity-free grants to the most promising companies to go through the course. The quality (and quantity!) of founders who participated in Startup School this past year made the grant selection process a tough one. Congratulations to the following startups* for their impressive progress over the 10-weeks of Startup School! Arula. Sydney, Australia. MORE
We’re excited to share the list of 2019 Top Y Combinator Companies. We also included top exits. We put this list together to help potential employees, partners, and late stage investors get to know a wider set of YC companies. If you’re looking for a job at one of our top companies, you can hit the Apply button to be taken to their careers page. The companies in this list are sorted by valuation. Why do we use valuation? MORE
Ginkgo Bioworks was the first bio company YC funded, back in summer 2014, which makes us especially delighted to announce a new partnership between YC and Ginkgo. Ginkgo Bioworks programs cells. They program them to produce flavors, fragrances, cannabinoids, food proteins, and more. To do that, they have built the world’s most advanced compiler and debugger of genetic code for the rapid engineering of new organisms. MORE
Y Combinator has a lot planned for 2020, including reaching more people with our worldwide events, going bigger with Startup School and serving our ever-growing communities of founders and developers. To make that all possible, we’re growing our YC team. Here’s a quick rundown of the roles we have open: Product Engineer, Startup School (San Francisco, CA). Community Manager, Startup School (San Francisco, CA). Content Manager (San Francisco or Mountain View, CA). MORE
This year, for the first time, we’ll be visiting universities and institutions to meet founders who are focused on building biotech and healthcare companies. Since 2014, YC has funded over 250 bio, healthcare, and life science companies, making us one of the largest seed stage bio/healthcare funders in the world. MORE
Across the globe, as the novel coronavirus moves us from communal spaces into the confinement of our homes, our social experiences are forced to adapt. Beyond the social networks we already know and use, we are finding new ways to integrate social into our online lives. MORE
Recently, while discussing a preemptive funding offer with a company, we noticed that the offer was more dilutive than expected. Wondering if this was an outlier, we looked at 120 US Series A rounds from our portfolio over the past 18 months to see whether or not preemptive offers were generally more or less dilutive than process driven rounds. We were somewhat surprised to discover that, on average, founders taking preemptive offers are taking ~1.4% more dilution for less money. MORE
Jeremy Rossman is the cofounder of Make School. Make School is a college for computer science headquartered in San Francisco. Make School students don’t pay until they have a job after graduation. They were part of YC’s Winter 2012 batch. You can find Jeremy on Twitter @jeremyrossmann. Topics. 00:05 – What is Make School? 00:45 – How is their intensive track different than a traditional college course load? MORE
We’re excited to announce that we’re hosting interviews in Brazil for startups based in South America for the first time this spring. They will be held in São Paulo from May 16-18 and are like regular YC interviews in every way. MORE
On August 24 and 25, YC will host our 31st Demo Day live over Zoom. After considering community feedback from our first, rapidly planned online Demo Day in March , we’ve decided that a live Demo Day is an important part of founders’ YC experience. MORE
I’ve recently noticed an uptick in the number of “angels” that aren’t actually angels. These investors are institutional funds (read, LP dollars), the details of which aren’t generally disclosed until the founder sees a strange entity name on the signature lines in the docs. This is different than investing through a trust or fund that represents an investor for legal reasons. MORE
With special contributions from Nic Dardenne. One of the most common questions we hear from founders is “How do I manage my board?” It’s something that provokes anxiety, because this is the first time the founder/CEO is subject to external supervision, and the board has powers that include the firing of the CEO and the senior management. It is natural to feel this way. MORE
Matt Cutts is the Administrator of the US Digital Service and previously he was the head of the webspam team at Google. You can find him on Twitter at @mattcutts. Topics. 00:00 – Intro. 00:18 – Working at Google in 2000. 2:30 – Did Google’s success feel certain? 3:35 – Building self-service ads. 7:05 – The evil unicorn problem. 8:05 – Lawsuits around search. 10:30 – Content moderation and spam. MORE
On April 24-26th, Cal Hacks is running hack:now, a 36-hour global online hackathon to foster innovative and technical solutions to challenges around the COVID-19 pandemic. MORE
YC has one of the most robust data sets on startups in the world, and the admissions team is excited to hire our first data scientist to dig into it. This is a great role for someone who’s inherently curious about our data. You should be experienced enough to know best practices but still excited to get your hands dirty. MORE
Diana Hu cofounded Escher Reality, which went through the Summer 2017 batch of YC. They were acquired by Niantic and she is now the head of their AR platform. She’s on Twitter @sdianahu. Topics. 00:00 – Intro. 00:15 – Getting into AR. 2:30 – Her first exposure to AR. 4:15 – AR’s future role in media. 7:20 – Deciding where to go with the product. 9:30 – Innovations that enabled AR. 14:00 – Building a product in a new market. MORE
In the summer of 2018, Qi Lu joined Y Combinator to help create YC China, a localized version of our U.S. program. As we worked to establish YC China, we had a change in leadership. With this, our strategy changed back to our tried and true approach of supporting local and international startups from our headquarters in Silicon Valley. As a result, we decided that now is not the right time to run a new, country-specific version of Y Combinator. MORE
We’re excited to announce that Startup School (SUS) is relaunching today as a continuous program. This change will allow us to serve many more founders than the traditional annual course we’ve been running since 2017 and better support startup founders year-round. MORE
We began offering the option to apply to Y Combinator Early Decision last September. If you’re a student, applying Early Decision to YC allows you to apply one batch ahead of the current one. For example, you can apply to YC in September, get your acceptance in October, and start the program in June after you graduate. We tried it as an experiment and it worked so well that we’re offering it permanently now, for both Winter and Summer batches. MORE
Series As usually require a founder to secure a single large investor: a lead. This is because the Series A is usually a company’s first priced round, which is when crucial terms around governance and control (like board composition) are decided. MORE
COVID-19 has accelerated the digitization of commerce globally. In the US, e-commerce penetration increased from 16% at the end of 2019 to 27% in April 2020. MORE
In order to confront the COVID-19 crisis, we need to immediately mobilize global scientific and technical talent. We have refreshed our Request for Startups , which are concepts we believe are important in the coming decades, to reflect this newest addition: Responding to COVID-19. We want to invest in startups working on: Tests / diagnostics. Treatments and vaccines. Equipment for hospitals. Monitoring and data infrastructure. Please apply to our next batch at ycombinator.com/apply/. MORE
Y Combinator
JUNE 17, 2020
We’re excited to announce that Startup School (SUS) is relaunching today as a continuous program. This change will allow us to serve many more founders than the traditional annual course we’ve been running since 2017 and better support startup founders year-round.
Y Combinator
MAY 6, 2020
Across the globe, as the novel coronavirus moves us from communal spaces into the confinement of our homes, our social experiences are forced to adapt. Beyond the social networks we already know and use, we are finding new ways to integrate social into our online lives.
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Y Combinator
APRIL 7, 2020
We’re excited to welcome Aaron Epstein to the YC Team, and welcome back Harj Taggar. After four batches as a Visiting Partner, Aaron Epstein is joining YC as a partner.
Y Combinator
JULY 24, 2020
COVID-19 has accelerated the digitization of commerce globally. In the US, e-commerce penetration increased from 16% at the end of 2019 to 27% in April 2020.
Advertiser: ZoomInfo
Every sales forecasting model has a different strength and predictability method. It’s recommended to test out which one is best for your team. This way, you’ll be able to further enhance – and optimize – your newly-developed pipeline. Your future sales forecast? Sunny skies (and success) are just ahead!
Y Combinator
APRIL 20, 2020
On April 24-26th, Cal Hacks is running hack:now, a 36-hour global online hackathon to foster innovative and technical solutions to challenges around the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Y Combinator
MARCH 10, 2020
Over the last few days, a large number of investors have accelerated their outreach to our current batch of founders. They are moving quickly to make investment decisions, and we’re going to match their pace and accelerate our schedule by one week. YC W20 online Demo Day will now be on March 16.
Y Combinator
MAY 7, 2020
In the early stages of working on a startup, there is little time to spend on areas other than product development and talking to users. However, as you start to hire people and build a team, there are HR fundamentals worth investing in.
Y Combinator
MARCH 25, 2020
In order to confront the COVID-19 crisis, we need to immediately mobilize global scientific and technical talent. We have refreshed our Request for Startups , which are concepts we believe are important in the coming decades, to reflect this newest addition: Responding to COVID-19. We want to invest in startups working on: Tests / diagnostics. Treatments and vaccines. Equipment for hospitals. Monitoring and data infrastructure. Please apply to our next batch at ycombinator.com/apply/.
Y Combinator
JUNE 24, 2020
Series As usually require a founder to secure a single large investor: a lead. This is because the Series A is usually a company’s first priced round, which is when crucial terms around governance and control (like board composition) are decided.
Advertiser: ZoomInfo
Sales enablement is the strategic process of providing sales teams with the content, guidance, and mentorship needed to engage targeted buyers. It’s all about equipping sales professionals with the tools they need to put their best-selling foot forward. And if sales teams want to continuously sell better -- and faster -- their sales enablement process must have a game-winning strategy. It's time for you to start selling smarter - and hitting your sales number - with the best B2B database in the market. Get started today.
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Y Combinator
JANUARY 16, 2020
This year, for the first time, we’ll be visiting universities and institutions to meet founders who are focused on building biotech and healthcare companies. Since 2014, YC has funded over 250 bio, healthcare, and life science companies, making us one of the largest seed stage bio/healthcare funders in the world.
Y Combinator
OCTOBER 25, 2019
I got a chance to interview Jack Forbes, CEO of Faros * (YC W19). He shares his experiences moonlighting as an intern at HigherMe (YC W15), playing soccer with YC founders & partners, and what drove him to start a YC company — even after being rejected.
Y Combinator
AUGUST 28, 2019
Diana Hu cofounded Escher Reality, which went through the Summer 2017 batch of YC. They were acquired by Niantic and she is now the head of their AR platform. She’s on Twitter @sdianahu. Topics. 00:00 – Intro. 00:15 – Getting into AR. 2:30 – Her first exposure to AR. 4:15 – AR’s future role in media. 7:20 – Deciding where to go with the product. 9:30 – Innovations that enabled AR. 14:00 – Building a product in a new market.
Y Combinator
SEPTEMBER 16, 2019
Ginkgo Bioworks was the first bio company YC funded, back in summer 2014, which makes us especially delighted to announce a new partnership between YC and Ginkgo. Ginkgo Bioworks programs cells. They program them to produce flavors, fragrances, cannabinoids, food proteins, and more. To do that, they have built the world’s most advanced compiler and debugger of genetic code for the rapid engineering of new organisms.
Advertiser: ZoomInfo
This eBook highlights best practices for developing a pipeline management process that helps sales leaders and their team C.L.O.S.E (you’ll see what we mean in this eBook) more revenue through data-driven prospecting, stage analysis, and subsequent sales enablement.
Y Combinator
MARCH 2, 2020
We’re excited to announce that we’re hosting interviews in Brazil for startups based in South America for the first time this spring. They will be held in São Paulo from May 16-18 and are like regular YC interviews in every way.
Y Combinator
AUGUST 12, 2019
I’ve recently noticed an uptick in the number of “angels” that aren’t actually angels. These investors are institutional funds (read, LP dollars), the details of which aren’t generally disclosed until the founder sees a strange entity name on the signature lines in the docs. This is different than investing through a trust or fund that represents an investor for legal reasons.
Y Combinator
NOVEMBER 21, 2019
In the summer of 2018, Qi Lu joined Y Combinator to help create YC China, a localized version of our U.S. program. As we worked to establish YC China, we had a change in leadership. With this, our strategy changed back to our tried and true approach of supporting local and international startups from our headquarters in Silicon Valley. As a result, we decided that now is not the right time to run a new, country-specific version of Y Combinator.
Y Combinator
DECEMBER 10, 2019
We’re excited to announce the next iteration of Startup School. The 8-week course will launch on January 20, 2020, and you can sign up to participate here ! We were floored by the quality (and quantity) of founders who participated in Startup School 2019. Our deepest thanks go to the founders who worked with us to make the program great.
Advertiser: ZoomInfo
Businesses are laying off workers, shutting their doors (some permanently), and struggling to react to the radical destruction that coronavirus (COVID-19) is doing to our society and communities. Most have already sustained massive damage, and we still have yet to see the scope of impact of the global pandemic that has upended the globe. Any return to normalcy may seem far-off, but sales and marketing are on the front lines of restarting the economy. When the dust settles, we have a responsibility to turn our shock and grief into fierce determination, and lead the charge of responsible, strategic, sustainable future growth. However, there’s no team better suited to lead that charge than the marketing department. Marketers are uniquely positioned to provide creative solutions to aid their organization in times of change and chart a course for navigating success.
Y Combinator
SEPTEMBER 19, 2019
Recently, while discussing a preemptive funding offer with a company, we noticed that the offer was more dilutive than expected. Wondering if this was an outlier, we looked at 120 US Series A rounds from our portfolio over the past 18 months to see whether or not preemptive offers were generally more or less dilutive than process driven rounds. We were somewhat surprised to discover that, on average, founders taking preemptive offers are taking ~1.4% more dilution for less money.
Y Combinator
DECEMBER 27, 2019
As part of our efforts to further support founders in Startup School , we awarded $15,000 in equity-free grants to the most promising companies to go through the course. The quality (and quantity!) of founders who participated in Startup School this past year made the grant selection process a tough one. Congratulations to the following startups* for their impressive progress over the 10-weeks of Startup School! Arula. Sydney, Australia.
Y Combinator
SEPTEMBER 10, 2019
We began offering the option to apply to Y Combinator Early Decision last September. If you’re a student, applying Early Decision to YC allows you to apply one batch ahead of the current one. For example, you can apply to YC in September, get your acceptance in October, and start the program in June after you graduate. We tried it as an experiment and it worked so well that we’re offering it permanently now, for both Winter and Summer batches.
Y Combinator
JULY 15, 2019
With special contributions from Nic Dardenne. One of the most common questions we hear from founders is “How do I manage my board?” It’s something that provokes anxiety, because this is the first time the founder/CEO is subject to external supervision, and the board has powers that include the firing of the CEO and the senior management. It is natural to feel this way.
Advertiser: ZoomInfo
Recent digital transformation has shifted the B2B landscape by ushering in the era of buyer empowerment. With more access to user reviews, analyst opinion, and industry research, decision-makers are more informed than ever while navigating what is now known as the “buyer’s journey.”
Y Combinator
JUNE 19, 2019
Jeremy Rossman is the cofounder of Make School. Make School is a college for computer science headquartered in San Francisco. Make School students don’t pay until they have a job after graduation. They were part of YC’s Winter 2012 batch. You can find Jeremy on Twitter @jeremyrossmann. Topics. 00:05 – What is Make School? 00:45 – How is their intensive track different than a traditional college course load?
Y Combinator
MAY 21, 2019
In 2018, Pew Research Center reported that 57% of Americans believe that children in America today will be worse off financially than their parents. Since 2013, this number has been as high as 65% — even though we are experiencing our 10th straight year of economic growth. We believe this mindset is the result of increased family debt, stagnant wages, and a lack of government commitment to provide equal access to the basic services families need to thrive.
Y Combinator
JANUARY 20, 2020
YC has one of the most robust data sets on startups in the world, and the admissions team is excited to hire our first data scientist to dig into it. This is a great role for someone who’s inherently curious about our data. You should be experienced enough to know best practices but still excited to get your hands dirty.
Y Combinator
MAY 20, 2019
I’m delighted to announce that Geoff Ralston is taking over for me as President of YC. I’ve known Geoff for almost ten years, he’s been a YC partner for eight, and I think he’s one of the most thoughtful, helpful, and kind investors in Silicon Valley. One of my earliest memories of Geoff is him laying on the floor of the first Stripe office helping the founders redline a contract for hours.
Advertiser: ZoomInfo
As data continues to play a starring role in today’s B2B organizations, both marketing and sales operations professionals are poised to solidify their place as critical revenue drivers. In particular, the evolution of the Marketing Operations (Ops) role has created a new standard in marketing and has become a vital component of an organization’s success.
Y Combinator
DECEMBER 4, 2019
Matt Cutts is the Administrator of the US Digital Service and previously he was the head of the webspam team at Google. You can find him on Twitter at @mattcutts. Topics. 00:00 – Intro. 00:18 – Working at Google in 2000. 2:30 – Did Google’s success feel certain? 3:35 – Building self-service ads. 7:05 – The evil unicorn problem. 8:05 – Lawsuits around search. 10:30 – Content moderation and spam.
Y Combinator
MAY 29, 2019
Michael Babineau is cofounder and CEO of Second Measure. Second Measure analyzes billions of credit card transactions to answer real-time questions on consumer behavior. They were in the Summer 2015 batch of YC and you can check them out at SecondMeasure.com. Kevin Hale is a Partner at YC. Before working at YC he cofounded Wufoo. You can find Michael on Twitter @mikebabineau and Kevin is @ilikevests. Topics. 00:00 – What idea did Mike apply to YC with?
Y Combinator
JULY 28, 2020
On August 24 and 25, YC will host our 31st Demo Day live over Zoom. After considering community feedback from our first, rapidly planned online Demo Day in March , we’ve decided that a live Demo Day is an important part of founders’ YC experience.
Y Combinator
OCTOBER 2, 2019
We’re excited to share the list of 2019 Top Y Combinator Companies. We also included top exits. We put this list together to help potential employees, partners, and late stage investors get to know a wider set of YC companies. If you’re looking for a job at one of our top companies, you can hit the Apply button to be taken to their careers page. The companies in this list are sorted by valuation. Why do we use valuation?
Advertiser: ZoomInfo
ZoomInfo has created the following eBook to help other B2B organizations gain insights on how to launch their own data-driven ABM strategy. In this eBook, we will reveal the good and the bad from our own campaign and highlight some key takeaways on how to improve your ABM strategies moving forward.
Y Combinator
DECEMBER 4, 2019
Y Combinator has a lot planned for 2020, including reaching more people with our worldwide events, going bigger with Startup School and serving our ever-growing communities of founders and developers. To make that all possible, we’re growing our YC team. Here’s a quick rundown of the roles we have open: Product Engineer, Startup School (San Francisco, CA). Community Manager, Startup School (San Francisco, CA). Content Manager (San Francisco or Mountain View, CA).
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