From ICPC World Finals to competitive programming clubs to building generalist audio models as the first engineer at a YC startup.
Visit blog.ycombinator.com → RSS feedOn Hacker News May 2013 – Jan 2022
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We’ve just finished reviewing applications for the Winter 2015 batch and have sent out invitations for interviews. In this cycle we saw a +40% increase in the number of companies applying over the Summer 2014 batch. Reviewing this many companies is a humbling experience and one we take very seriously. Most of us who…
This month, YC will be participating in Quora’s most recent investment round and Quora will be joining this summer’s YC batch. This is a new experiment for us; we’ve funded later-stage companies before, but none close to Quora’s stage. Our hope is that both the company and the YC community will get a lot of value out…
Some people think YC only funds straightforward software startups. That’s definitely not the case — YC’s largest exit to date is a self-driving car company, Cruise Automation [http://fortune.com/2016/03/11/gm-buying-self-driving-tech-startup-for-more-than-1-billion/] , and we’ve funded many other hard technology…
Jasper Kuria of Capital & Growth [https://capitalandgrowth.org/index.html] interviewed YC Partner Paul Buchheit about his experience as employee #23 at Google and his key investing insights. Jasper : You came up with Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto in 2000. Sixteen years later, do you feel they have stayed true? Paul …
We get asked a lot for statistics on the YC portfolio. Even though some of these aren’t that helpful [1], here is the latest update on the numbers we get asked about the most. As always, all the credit goes to the founders. Total market cap of all YC companies: >$30 billion Total money raised by all YC companies: >$3…
Sam wrote about this in his recent blog post [https://ycombinator.com/blog/diversity-and-startups], but I’ve found that important and seemingly obvious things often bear repeating. So with Demo Day approaching, I’d like to make the following point explicit: Y Combinator has a zero tolerance policy for inappropriate…
[https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/wordpress/2019/01/yc120-v1.png] The world is shaped by people with intelligence, drive and vision. At YC, we’ve learned a lot about cultivating a network of such people — and we believe that having a strong network is such a force multiplier that it is one of the most…
DoorDash is the first company that I’ve had the opportunity to follow all the way from YC application to IPO, so to celebrate I thought it would be fun and interesting to share what a great company like DoorDash looks like at the earliest stages. Meeting startups at the very start of their journey is one of my…
We’ve just open-sourced a sales agreement [http://www.ycombinator.com/documents/#sales]any company can use. Though obviously you should use this at your own risk, we’ve had a lot of experience with what makes good and bad sales agreements. Special thanks to Tyler Bosmeny, James Riley, and Carolynn and Jon Levy for all…
Kwindla Hultman Kramer [https://twitter.com/kwindla] is the founder of Daily.co [http://Daily.co] (W16). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When we started Daily.co [http://Daily.co], we thought we were only targeting the US market. Our plan was to get traction at home and…
We’re excited to announce that we’ll be holding interviews for the Summer 2019 batch in Bangalore for founders based in India. This will take place from May 7 to 9. We’ve received an increasing number of applications from India and this will allow us to interview more Indian founders. So far, we’ve funded over 40…
Below is a copy of an email I sent to investors who attend YC’s Demo Day. It discusses some of the changes we’re making and how they will impact Demo Day. > YC Demo Day Investors,We’re making some changes to Y Combinator’s Demo Days – please take a minute to read below because they are material. As with previous…
One of the most common questions I hear is: “why has YC continued to grow our batch size?”. For each twice-yearly batch, we receive thousands of applicants through our online application [https://www.ycombinator.com/apply]. We have always wanted to fund as many great founders as possible and are convinced that in the…
In the past few years, we’ve seen more founders from around the world coming to Silicon Valley to start startups. In YC’s W14 batch alone, we had founders from 22 different countries, and every year we see an increasing number of international applicants. We want to help founders from all over learn about startups, so…
The application deadline for YC Summer 2018 is on March 24, and in honor of the deadline, we published an update to our Request for Startups [http://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/] (RFS). While many of the best ideas we’ve funded were ones that surprised us, there are always a collection of ideas we wish more founders would…
We get asked (a lot) for statistics on the YC portfolio about valuation and fundraising. Although these are very imperfect indicators of success, here they are. All of these companies actually went through a YC batch and got their start with us (e.g. we do not include Quora). Also, the YC application for the next…
Cryptocurrencies and tokens are becoming increasingly popular. In this post, we’ll explore the context that triggered this frenzy, the new possibilities tokens unlock, and why people are excited about its future.
Edit: YC W20 Demo Day is now on March 16. See here [https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-w20-online-demo-day-now-on-march-16/] for more info. 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…
We’ve modified our fundraising strategy advice to YC founders. In the interest of everyone having the same information, here is the email I sent to the current batch this morning. Founders, As Y Combinator’s prominence has grown in recent years, we’ve seen a flood of new investors who are very focused on investing in…
I’m delighted to announce a promotion and three additions to the YC team. Kat Manalac has been our director of outreach since 2013. She’s done an incredible job, and we’re making her a partner. In addition to regular partner responsibilities, she’ll continue to be responsible for outreach to prospective founders and…
Sam is a cofounder of PocketSuite (YC W16). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We still hear it all the time: “I’m building the Uber for X.” That idea – an app that lets consumers get a specific service when they need it, while giving service professionals (“pros”)…
Last year, for the first time, we taught a MOOC (massively open online course) for startup founders called Startup School. This year, we’re adding a new course called Startup Investor School [https://investor.startupschool.org] which will teach the basics of seed (early) stage startup investing to anyone interested…
We’re optimistic we will beat climate change. But, at the same time, we need to prepare for things to get worse. One area we think a lot about is water—natural fresh supplies could be at serious risk around the world. We’re close to a tipping point where technology will let us make clean water extremely abundant and…
A new trend in Y Combinator applications is that an increasing number of applicants have already been through some sort of accelerator or “pre-accelerator” program. As we’ve dug into this trend, we’ve found that many of the applicants did these programs not because they needed the money or advice but because they…
As of this batch we’re introducing a new policy for investments by YC partners in the companies we fund. YC partners have invested in the startups we fund since the first batch. In the beginning it was harmless, and occasionally even necessary. And other investors couldn’t treat investments by YC partners as much of a…
Here are some of our favorite Hacker News comments from April and May. If you see something cool like this, email us at hn@ycombinator.com [mailto:hn@ycombinator.com] so we can add it to the next list. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- HN users across countries discuss…
I’m delighted to announce that Kat Manalac, Kirsty Nathoo, Carolynn Levy and I are hosting Y Combinator’s first Female Founders Conference [http://femalefoundersconference.org]on Saturday, March 1. We’re going to gather together female founders at all stages to share stories, give advice, and make connections. The…
Pete Adeney, more commonly known as Mr. Money Mustache [https://twitter.com/mrmoneymustache], retired at 30 after working as a software engineer for about ten years. He blogs at MrMoneyMustache.com [http://MrMoneyMustache.com] about how he saved money, where he invested it, and how he achieved “financial freedom…