We are making two changes to our standard deal in conjunction with a recent fundraise. Starting with the Winter 2021 batch, our deal will be $125,000 for 7% equity on a post-money safe, and we will reduce the amount of our pro rata right to 4% of subsequent rounds. In the coming … | Continue reading
If you’ve run a full Series A fundraising process and haven’t found a lead, pulling together a syndicate can be a good Plan B. (We’ve even seen a few cases where pulling together a competing “offer” from a syndicate triggered a term sheet offer from a lead.) If you’re in this pos … | Continue reading
Marc Cuva is the lead Product Manager at ReadMe (YC W15) where he was also the company’s first full-time engineer. Learn more about Marc's impact on the company vision, his transition to product, and the mentorship he’s gotten from ReadMe’s founder to further his development. | Continue reading
To help job seekers amid this crisis, I’m spending a lot of time doing 1-1s and resume reviews. Below are my most common pieces of advice.Mail me your resume (ryan@ycombinator.com) if you want feedback or pointer | Continue reading
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.In addition to t … | Continue reading
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.In addition to t … | Continue reading
Des Traynor is the cofounder of Intercom. He stopped by to talk about product strategy and what he's learned as his role at Intercom has evolved. | Continue reading
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. At Y Comb … | Continue reading
We have decided to run the S20 batch remotely, because amid the COVID-19 crises, the safety of founders and YC staff is our top priority. Interviews for the batch will be remote, and office hours, evening talks, and meetups throughout the batch will all take place over video conf … | Continue reading
A conversation with Nick Grandy, Airbnb’s first employee. | Continue reading
Many YC startups are actively hiring on Work at a Startup across engineering, product, design, marketing and more. We asked founders to shoot a 30-second video describing their businesses and open roles. Meet them here. | Continue reading
At YC, we want to help those who have been impacted by recent layoffs. As always, anyone is welcome to create a profile on Work at a Startup, which makes it simple to browse the 400+ YC companies that are actively hiring, including larger ones like Segment, Brex and Instacart. YC … | Continue reading
We hosted a virtual panel with YC alum on best practices for managing a remote team. We aggregated the advice shared by alum, including Sid Sijbrandij & Darren Murph of GitLab (remote team of 1,200+), Wade Foster of Zapier (remote team of 300+), Ian Tien of Mattermost (remote tea … | Continue reading
We want to make sure founders know that the YC Summer 2020 batch will take place. Our online application is open now and we will run our application review process as we always do, with some modifications to how we run interviews. Additionally, depending on the circumstances this … | Continue reading
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 … | Continue reading
A lot of people ask themselves why they should start a startup. My answer to why you should start a startup is simple: there is a certain type of person who only works at their peak capacity when there is no predictable path to follow, the odds of success are low, and they have t … | Continue reading
On March 23, YC will host our 30th Demo Day online. With the growing concern over COVID-19, we believe this is the right thing to do for the safety of all attendees, including our team, founders, investors, and the media. | Continue reading
An MVP is not just a product with half of the features chopped out, or a way to get the product out the door a little earlier. | Continue reading
We started YC’s Series A Program two years ago to fix a problem faced by every startup raising an A: VCs understand how Series A's work and founders do not. This asymmetry of information puts founders at a significant disadvantage. Much as YC had done for seed stage financings - … | Continue reading
The deadline to apply for YC Summer 2020 is Monday, March 16 at 8pm. | Continue reading
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. | Continue reading
As part of our efforts to further support founders in [Startup School][1], 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 s … | Continue reading
When people ask me for tech career advice I find it helpful to lay out the three paths I’ve encountered most in my career: founder, executive, and employee. I wrote this post though because when I talk to people about their careers I’m surprised at how often they focus on only on … | Continue reading
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. | Continue reading
Vikrum Nijjar joined as the first engineer at Firebase, and did whatever it took to help the company succeed: scaling out infrastructure, shipping mobile SDKs, hosting 1-1 office hours with developers and even standing in as SRE for 24x7 hour shifts... for over a year.In this int … | Continue reading
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 intern … | Continue reading
Michael Seibel on what makes the top 10% of founders different. | Continue reading
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. | Continue reading
YC Partner and Head of Admissions Dalton Caldwell on consuming tech media and being careful to choose things that encourage you to do more. | Continue reading
We’re excited to share the list of 2019 Top Y Combinator Companies. We put this list together to help potential employees, partners, and late stage investors get to know a wider set of YC companies. | Continue reading
Cynthia Rogers landed at ClearBrain (YC W18) as the second eng hire, and found exactly what she wanted: a great mentor/manager, a strong technical team, and challenging work to keep her learning (but not overwhelmed). Read how she evaluates startups — both technically and cultura … | Continue reading
Y Combinator CEO and Partner Michael Seibel on how to cold email investors. | Continue reading
At our 29th Demo Day, 175 companies presented over two days. You can read more about the companies on TechCrunch (day one and day two coverage of S19 Demo Day), Forbes, and Crunchbase.Below are stats about the S19 batch.As a reminder, the application deadline for YC W20 is coming … | Continue reading
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. On average, founders taking preemptive offers are taking ~1.4% more dilution for less money. | Continue reading
Earlier this week, we interviewed Rent the Backyard about their Early Decision experience. This week, we talked to Wren. | Continue reading
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 mor … | Continue reading
We’re delighted to announce that YC is hosting online office hours for founders of startups and nonprofits that are solving climate issues on Tuesday, September 24. | Continue reading
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Aaron Harris is a Partner at YC and before that he cofounded Tutorspree. | Continue reading
Y Combinator CEO and Partner Michael Seibel on the biggest mistakes first-time founders make. | Continue reading
YC Partner and Tutorspree cofounder Aaron Harris on when to shut down a startup. | Continue reading
Russ Roberts is the host of the podcast EconTalk, a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, and the author of several books, including How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life. | Continue reading
I've noticed that raising money for a biotech or other life science company in 2019 looks a lot like raising money for a tech company 10 years ago. Since then, fundamental forces caused fundraising for tech companies to change dramatically. And I believe that they are going to ch … | Continue reading
In this blog post, I’ll dive into the other key reasons why the best companies and developers share almost everything they do, discuss some of the common objections to sharing, and by the end, I hope to convince you and your company to start sharing too. | Continue reading
Camille Fournier is a Managing Director at Two Sigma and the former CTO of Rent The Runway. She’s also the author of The Manager’s Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change. | Continue reading
We’re excited to announce that Y Combinator will be visiting Buenos Aires on September 17-18, 2019. | Continue reading
Anu Hariharan shares the collective wisdom of the YC community to help guide founders on best practices in managing a board––including running board meetings and overcoming board issues. | Continue reading
Michael Seibel on communicating with investors. | Continue reading