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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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…
Today, we’re opening up registration for Startup School 2019, our free online course for founders looking to get help turning an idea into a startup. The 10 week course will begin July 22, 2019 and is free for everyone to participate. You can register at Startup School [https://startupschool.org]. We will again be…
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…
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…
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…
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?…
The very nature of the human race is about to change. This change will be radical and rapid beyond anything in our species’ history. A chapter of our story just ended and the next chapter has begun. This revolution in what it means to be human will be enabled by a new genetic technology that goes by the innocuous…
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…
Edit: Ali is now the CEO of YC Continuity [http://ycombinator.com/continuity] I’m delighted to announce that Ali Rowghani is joining YC as a part-time partner. He will mostly focus on helping our alumni that are a few years out of YC scale their companies, but I’m sure the current batch will enjoy getting to know him…
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…