1
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 71 posts.
2
Jessica Livingston’s Pretty Complete List on How Not to Fail
Read more on Y Combinator's blog.
3
Signs that a startup is focused on stuff that doesn’t matter
Groove is now Helply!
4
GitLab Master Plan
GitLab announces $20M in Series B funding, and its Master Plan to build an integrated toolset for the modern developer!
5
YC Changes
TL;DR: *Michael Seibel will be the new CEO of YC Core, which we are now just going to call “YC”. *Ali Rowghani is now the CEO of the YC Continuity Fund. *I’m going to be the President of YC Group, which includes YC, YC Continuity, YC Research, and our new online class. We’ll add more organizational units over time…
6
7
Starting a real business
Online payment processing for internet businesses. Stripe is a suite of payment APIs that powers commerce for businesses of all sizes.
8
How to Test Drive Your Business Idea Before Quitting Your Job
This post on validating a new business idea (or business venture) was inspired by lean methodology books like Lean Startup, Running Lean, 4 Steps to the Epiphany, and Lean Analytics.
9
Before You Grow
Startups are defined by growth [http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html], but growth isn’t step one in building a great company. If you focus on trying to grow before you make a product people love, you are unlikely to succeed. We’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating–many founders hurt their companies by…
10
Fellowship V2
Last fall, YC ran an 8 week experiment calledThe Fellowship [https://ycombinator.wpengine.com/yc-fellowship]to fund and work with startups at the idea or prototype stage. The goal was to see if we could create a program that could help more early-stage startups at scale. The experiment went well and I have a few…
11
Paul Graham on Doing Things Right by Accident
Read more on Y Combinator's blog.
12
13
14
Hard Tech Startups
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…
15
Getting Press for Your Startup
Read more on Y Combinator's blog.
16
Users You Don’t Want
Read more on Y Combinator's blog.
17
Building an Open Core Company: Interview with GitLab's CEO
Building an Open Source Company: Interview with GitLab's CEO
18
Jessica Livingston: How to Build the Future
How To Build The Future: Jessica is a cofounder of Y Combinator.
19
20
Advice for companies with less than 1 year of runway
Read more on Y Combinator's blog.
21
22
How to Pitch Your Company
Read more on Y Combinator's blog.
23
How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads
We've also tried Facebook marketing. In this blog post we describe our successes and failures with the marketing channel Facebook.
24
25
26
Investor Day
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…
27
How to Email Early Stage Investors
Read more on Y Combinator's blog.
28
Fundraising Advice for YC Companies
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…
29
It's harder to get into YC if you’ve been through another accelerator
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…
30
A Guide to Seed Fundraising
Read more on Y Combinator's blog.