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Twilio's Seed Pitch
I read yesterday evening that our portfolio company Twilio, which priced its IPO last night, is going to live code from the NYSE this morning. That brought a powerful flashback to the first time I met Jeff Lawson, founder and CEO of Twilio. It was 2008 in our old offices on the 14th floor of […]
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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…
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Paypal froze our funds, then offered us a business loan
About a year ago, we made the decision to use Paypal as the primary payment method for our company, Hacker Paradise. After about a month…
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Getting Press for Your Startup
Read more on Y Combinator's blog.
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Users You Don’t Want
Read more on Y Combinator's blog.
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Building an Open Core Company: Interview with GitLab's CEO
Building an Open Source Company: Interview with GitLab's CEO
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Jessica Livingston: How to Build the Future
How To Build The Future: Jessica is a cofounder of Y Combinator.
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Advice for companies with less than 1 year of runway
Read more on Y Combinator's blog.
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How to Pitch Your Company
Read more on Y Combinator's blog.
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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.
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'We're in a Bubble'
A lot of people have been saying we’re in a tech bubble for quite some time. Someday they’ll be right, but in the meantime, I thought it'd be fun to look back at some articles from the last 10...
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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…
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From Losing Money to a Profit Margin in 5 Months
A few months ago I wrote about the difficulty of self-funding a rapidly growing startup. If you haven’t read that yet, go and do that now. I’ll wait. Here’s the quick timeline: JAN 2013 — Started on the idea for ConvertKit JUN 2013 — Reached $2,000 a month in recurring revenue (MRR). SEP 2014 — Revenue declines to…
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How to Email Early Stage Investors
Read more on Y Combinator's blog.
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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…
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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…
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A Guide to Seed Fundraising
Read more on Y Combinator's blog.
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Opendoor, a startup worth emulating
OpenDoor has a unique yet high-risk approach to residential real estate; that’s a great thing, both for its prospects and for society.
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