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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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…
Harj Taggar [https://twitter.com/Harjeet] is cofounder and CEO of Triplebyte [https://triplebyte.com/] (YC S15). Triplebyte helps great engineers find work at the fastest growing companies in the world, with the least amount of time and effort. Before cofounding Triplebyte, Harj was a Partner at YC…
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…
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…
If you missed Startup School 2014, the videos are now on YouTube [http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ-uHSnFig5OyY5JWSQrl_gESiEUJxe1m]. Notes from the 10th anniversary of Startup School: Ron Conway, SVAngel [http://youtu.be/qvHhhIfu7Lo?list=PLQ-uHSnFig5OyY5JWSQrl_gESiEUJxe1m] Are entrepreneurs made or born?…
Sam Chaudhary [https://twitter.com/samchaudhary_] is the cofounder and CEO of ClassDojo [https://www.classdojo.com/]. They’ve raised $30M and have 30 employees. Karen Lien [https://twitter.com/karenlien03] is an Edtech Principal here at YC…
We are changing the standard deal at YC and increasing our investment from $120K to $150K. The $150K investment for 7% will be made on a post-money cap safe. We believe the post-money safe is simpler, making ownership and dilution easier to understand. This new deal will start with our Winter 2019 batch, and replaces…
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 conferencing, as well as on our online…
When you start a startup, you get pushed off the side of a cliff with a bag of aerospace parts.1 You hope they are the parts for a spaceship, and they look like they might be, but it’s impossible to tell when they’re all in a bag. So you start figuring out how the parts fit together as you fall. Every once in a while…
I’m thrilled to announce that I’m joining Y Combinator full-time. My job is to help our companies make hardware people want faster and better than ever before. Fortunately, our alumni are the best resource in the world for this: they’ve built some of the most innovative startups of the last decade. Coupled with our…
Earlier this fall, we announced our first Open Office Hours [https://ycombinator.wpengine.com/yc-open-office-hours-for-black-and-hispanic-founders] where founders got to meet one-on-one with YC partners. We piloted the program with Black and Latino founders, over 650 founders applied in under a week, and we were able…
In 2018, Pew Research Center reported [https://www.pewglobal.org/2019/03/04/u-s-german-relations-methodology-spring-2018-global-attitudes-survey/] 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…
Y Combinator now has 5 major groups—YC Fellowship, YC Core, YC Continuity, YC Research, and Hacker News—and we’re putting one person in charge of each group. Paul Buchheit is taking over for me as managing partner of the core YC program. We’re going to continue doing YC Fellowship (!), and Kevin Hale is going to be…
We are now accepting applications for the Winter 2015 batch. You can apply as a startup or as a non-profit [http://www.ycombinator.com/nonprofits/]. If you want to apply, submit your applicationhere [http://www.ycombinator.com/apply/]by 8pm PT on October 14. For more information on the process, readHow to Successfully…
Elad Gil [https://twitter.com/eladgil] is a serial entrepreneur (Mixer Labs – acquired by Twitter, and Color Genomics [https://www.color.com/]), operator (Google, Twitter) and an investor in a number of YC companies including Airbnb (W09), Checkr (S14), Coinbase (S12), Front (S14), Gusto (W12), Instacart (S12), Stripe…
Sam Altman [https://twitter.com/sama], President of Y Combinator, shares his thoughts on how you can succeed with a startup. Learn more at https://www.startupschool.org/
As YC grows, founders are wondering how it’s improved over time. This is a valid line of questioning – clearly much has changed about YC over 13 years. We have new leadership [http://www.ycombinator.com/people/], much larger batch sizes [https://blog.ycombinator.com/category/batch-stats/], we invest more money…
We’re excited to announce our first-ever YC Build Sprint. This is a 4-week period to work intensively towards a defined goal alongside a community of thousands of other founders. The sprint will kick off on August 24 and be administered through our free Startup School platform. Also, we’ll be awarding 20 grants of…
At YC, we’re deeply interested in education because of its power to transform lives and societies and to maximize human potential. On a micro level, we believe technology can help reverse the trend in K-12 of spending more and more money to achieve the same learning outcomes. We believe tech can also create…
We’re hosting a hackathon this summer at YC in Mountain View. Our goal is to give smart hackers an excuse to get together and spend time building something they find interesting. We don’t have a theme—we want to leave it open to any good ideas. The hackathon will start Saturday, August 2 at noon, and end August 3 in…
The hardest conversation I have to have with a founder is when they’ve spent their 1-2 million dollar angel round but haven’t found product market fit [https://blog.ycombinator.com/the-real-product-market-fit/]. Unfortunately, I have to ask them a very unforgiving question: why does your company deserve more money?…
We’ve refreshed the Requests for Startups [http://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/]. Here are the additions: Food and Farming An estimated 40% of the world’s workforce works in agriculture. Better food and farming could increase the world’s health, unlock the potential of numerous workers, and improve living conditions for…
Wade Foster [https://twitter.com/wadefoster] is the CEO of Zapier [https://zapier.com/] (YC S12). Read Zapier’s de-location post here [https://zapier.com/blog/move-away-from-sf-get-remote-job/]. If you are interested in remote work, you can also check out our interview with Gitlab…
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 [https://www.ycombinator.com/documents/] right to 4% of subsequent rounds. In the…