AI sales agent custom trained for each company to reach the best leads. Founded in 2023 by Dan Elkaim, Léonard Henriquez, and Robin Philibert, Topo has 5 employees based in Paris, France.

Topo: AI sales agent custom trained for each company to reach the best leads | Y Combinator

We’ve been working on Positional for about 13 months. Our company, however, was actually in Y Combinator’s S21 batch. In short, we spent two years building something that people didn’t want. We decided to make a hard pivot, and that ultimately led us to Positional.

Launch YC: 📈Positional — A modern platform for content marketing & SEO | Y Combinator

Storied startup accelerator Y Combinator is targeting at least $2 billion, sources told Forbes, in its first major fundraising effort under Garry Tan.

Y Combinator Is Raising Billions In New Funding

Start your morning with the important global tech news of the day, covered by The Information team across five time zones.

Briefing: Y Combinator Plots $2 Billion in New Funds

The mostly-frozen tech IPO market began to show signs of life this week as global markets soared with Reddit enjoying a day as a Wall Street hero. Thursday’s IPO follows a very long and bumpy climb for Reddit from its 2005 debut as a charter member of Y Combinator.

Reddit IPO Is a YC Origin Story…Microsoft’s Inflection Deal…IVP in the VC Directory

&quot;I met the Reddits before we even started Y Combinator. In fact they were one of the reasons we started it,&quot; writes PG.

The Reddits | Y Combinator

We help startups build, deploy, and scale their open source AI stack 10x faster.

Launch YC: OpenFoundry: Developer infrastructure for open source AI 🛠️🤖 | Y Combinator

Build websites faster with our beautiful, premade UI component kit

Launch YC: Noya UI — 🪐 Universal component kit | Y Combinator

Fintech platform Yenmo, which provides instant loans against mutual funds, has raised $500,000 in a seed funding round led by US-based startup accelerator Y Combinator. Founded by Aryan Agarwal and Ashutosh Purohit, Yenmo enables its users to borrow against their investments at a flat 10.5% ...

Fintech startup Yenmo secures $500,000 in funding round led by Y Combinator - The Economic Times

He shares valuable examples from successful Y Combinator companies, and offers practical advice on determining your MVP feature set, creating prototypes for user testing, and presenting your MVP to early customers or investors.

How to build an MVP for your startup idea?

Y Combinator

y-combinator

SAN FRANCISCO, United States, October 28th, 2024/Chainwire/--Another set of EasyA hackathon winners (also known as “gigabrains”) are headed to Y Combinator. Artemiy Malyshau and Jeevan Juttla attended their first EasyA x Polkadot hackathon nearly two years ago, where they first started experimenting with the ideas that would later become Gecko Sec. Today, they’ve just been accepted into the world-famous Y Combinator accelerator, which has backed some of the world’s most successful Web3 companies like CoinBase, Filecoin and many more. According to the team, Gecko Sec lets Web3 developers build secure code quickly without wasting time on tools that don’t deliver results, or relying on one-time human pentests that quickly become outdated. As they continue to develop their groundbreaking software, they’re working on rolling this out for teams building on Polkadot. Writing code that is secure and safe is one of the biggest concerns for Web3 developers, with many millions of dollars spent on security audits every month in Web3 alone. EasyA gigabrains Jeevan Jutla and Artemiy Malyshau credit EasyA with helping them get off the ground and giving them the inspiration to succeed. “What started off at an EasyA hackathon has led to us getting backed by Y Combinator. Big shoutout to Phil and Dom for pushing us out of our comfort zone and getting us here!” said Artemiy Malyshau, Co-Founder of Gecko Sec. Jeevan Juttla and Artemiy Malyshau have also got highly accomplished professional and educational backgrounds. Jeevan Juttla, CEO and Co-founder of Gecko Sec, graduated with a First Class Degree in Electrical Engineering from King’s College London. After graduating, Jeevan was hired by the UK government’s National Cyber Security Centre to secure the British Government’s data and subsequently joined Binance as a Security Engineer. Artemiy Malyshau also graduated with First Class Honours in Electrical Engineering from King’s College London, one of the UK’s top universities. Shortly after this, he earned a Master’s Degree with Distinction in Applied Computational Science and Engineering from Imperial College University. GeckoSec joins a long list of EasyA hackathon winners who’ve gone on to achieve storied success in blockchain. Other EasyA hackathon winners like Axal, founded by Harvard grad Ashlan Ahmed, have been backed by a16z and are planning to announce their latest fundraising round later this month. To date, EasyA alumni have already founded companies valued at nearly $3 billion. EasyA has received interest from VCs who want access to its startups pipeline. Although it won’t share the precise details yet, EasyA shares that it has its sights set on launching a fund designed to invest exclusively in its gigabrain community and hackathon winners. "Seeing our EasyA gigabrains go from launching at our hackathons to getting accepted into YC is testament to the talent density and founder spirit within the EasyA community. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.” said Dom Kwok, Co-Founder of EasyA. Much of the success of EasyA hackathon winners can be traced to the company’s co-founders, who have been instrumental in spotting young talent and nurturing them as founders. Users can go to any EasyA hackathon and find Phil and Dom on the ground, inspiring developers to launch the next unicorns. EasyA co-founders Phil and Dom have been active in blockchain for over 10 years. Prior to EasyA, Phil worked at prestigious law firm Sullivan & Cromwell and Dom worked at the world’s largest Private Equity firm, The Blackstone Group. Their educational backgrounds have also given them, and EasyA, a unique pipeline of talented founders across the US and Europe. Phil was a top scholar at Cambridge University, and Dom studied at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated Cum Laude as a Joseph Wharton and Benjamin Franklin Scholar. According to Phil and Dom, they’re just getting started. Numerous high-profile fundraising announcements are coming out of the EasyA community over the coming months. About EasyA EasyA is one of Web3’s most popular apps, making it possible for anyone to learn about Web3 right from their phones. Learners earn rewards for mastering new skills, and the best ones are invited to in-person hackathons to launch their startups in world-leading hubs like San Francisco, London and Singapore. EasyA alumni have founded startups valued at nearly $3 billion and have raised from top VCs like a16z, Founders Fund, YC and many more. Launched by brothers Phil and Dom Kwok, top grads from the University of Cambridge and The Wharton School respectively, EasyA has over 1 million users and has won Apple’s highly-coveted App of the Day award. Users can learn more: https://www.easya.io/ Contact Dom Kwok dom@easya.io This story was distributed as a release by Chainwire under HackerNoon’s Business Blogging Program. Learn more about the program here. SAN FRANCISCO, United States, October 28th, 2024/Chainwire/--Another set of EasyA hackathon winners (also known as “gigabrains”) are headed to Y Combinator. Artemiy Malyshau and Jeevan Juttla attended their first EasyA x Polkadot hackathon nearly two years ago, where they first started experimenting with the ideas that would later become Gecko Sec . Artemiy Malyshau Artemiy Malyshau Jeevan Juttla Jeevan Juttla Gecko Sec Gecko Sec Today, they’ve just been accepted into the world-famous Y Combinator accelerator, which has backed some of the world’s most successful Web3 companies like CoinBase, Filecoin and many more. According to the team, Gecko Sec lets Web3 developers build secure code quickly without wasting time on tools that don’t deliver results, or relying on one-time human pentests that quickly become outdated. As they continue to develop their groundbreaking software, they’re working on rolling this out for teams building on Polkadot. Writing code that is secure and safe is one of the biggest concerns for Web3 developers, with many millions of dollars spent on security audits every month in Web3 alone. EasyA gigabrains Jeevan Jutla and Artemiy Malyshau credit EasyA with helping them get off the ground and giving them the inspiration to succeed. “What started off at an EasyA hackathon has led to us getting backed by Y Combinator. Big shoutout to Phil and Dom for pushing us out of our comfort zone and getting us here!” said Artemiy Malyshau, Co-Founder of Gecko Sec. “What started off at an EasyA hackathon has led to us getting backed by Y Combinator. Big shoutout to Phil and Dom for pushing us out of our comfort zone and getting us here!” said Artemiy Malyshau, Co-Founder of Gecko Sec. Jeevan Juttla and Artemiy Malyshau have also got highly accomplished professional and educational backgrounds. Jeevan Juttla, CEO and Co-founder of Gecko Sec, graduated with a First Class Degree in Electrical Engineering from King’s College London. After graduating, Jeevan was hired by the UK government’s National Cyber Security Centre to secure the British Government’s data and subsequently joined Binance as a Security Engineer. Artemiy Malyshau also graduated with First Class Honours in Electrical Engineering from King’s College London, one of the UK’s top universities. Shortly after this, he earned a Master’s Degree with Distinction in Applied Computational Science and Engineering from Imperial College University. GeckoSec joins a long list of EasyA hackathon winners who’ve gone on to achieve storied success in blockchain. Other EasyA hackathon winners like Axal , founded by Harvard grad Ashlan Ahmed, have been backed by a16z and are planning to announce their latest fundraising round later this month. To date, EasyA alumni have already founded companies valued at nearly $3 billion. Axal Axal EasyA has received interest from VCs who want access to its startups pipeline. Although it won’t share the precise details yet, EasyA shares that it has its sights set on launching a fund designed to invest exclusively in its gigabrain community and hackathon winners. "Seeing our EasyA gigabrains go from launching at our hackathons to getting accepted into YC is testament to the talent density and founder spirit within the EasyA community. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.” said Dom Kwok, Co-Founder of EasyA. "Seeing our EasyA gigabrains go from launching at our hackathons to getting accepted into YC is testament to the talent density and founder spirit within the EasyA community. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.” said Dom Kwok, Co-Founder of EasyA. Much of the success of EasyA hackathon winners can be traced to the company’s co-founders, who have been instrumental in spotting young talent and nurturing them as founders. Users can go to any EasyA hackathon and find Phil and Dom on the ground, inspiring developers to launch the next unicorns. EasyA co-founders Phil and Dom have been active in blockchain for over 10 years. Prior to EasyA, Phil worked at prestigious law firm Sullivan & Cromwell and Dom worked at the world’s largest Private Equity firm, The Blackstone Group. Their educational backgrounds have also given them, and EasyA, a unique pipeline of talented founders across the US and Europe. Phil was a top scholar at Cambridge University, and Dom studied at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated Cum Laude as a Joseph Wharton and Benjamin Franklin Scholar. According to Phil and Dom, they’re just getting started. Numerous high-profile fundraising announcements are coming out of the EasyA community over the coming months. About EasyA EasyA is one of Web3’s most popular apps, making it possible for anyone to learn about Web3 right from their phones. Learners earn rewards for mastering new skills, and the best ones are invited to in-person hackathons to launch their startups in world-leading hubs like San Francisco, London and Singapore. EasyA EasyA EasyA alumni have founded startups valued at nearly $3 billion and have raised from top VCs like a16z, Founders Fund, YC and many more. Launched by brothers Phil and Dom Kwok, top grads from the University of Cambridge and The Wharton School respectively, EasyA has over 1 million users and has won Apple’s highly-coveted App of the Day award. Users can learn more: https://www.easya.io/ https://www.easya.io/ https://www.easya.io/ Contact Dom Kwok dom@easya.io This story was distributed as a release by Chainwire under HackerNoon’s Business Blogging Program. Learn more about the program here. This story was distributed as a release by Chainwire under HackerNoon’s Business Blogging Program. Learn more about the program here . here

EasyA x Polkadot Hackathon Winners Accepted To YCombinator To Secure Web3

تم قبول الفائزين في EasyA x Polkadot Hackathon في YCombinator لتأمين Web3

Los ganadores del hackathon EasyA x Polkadot fueron aceptados en YCombinator para proteger la Web3

EasyA x Polkadot Hackathon -voittajat hyväksyttiin YCombinatoriin suojattuun Web3:een

Pobjednici EasyA x Polkadot hackathona primljeni su u YCombinator kako bi osigurali Web3

Az EasyA x Polkadot Hackathon győzteseit elfogadták az YCombinatorba a biztonságos web3 érdekében

EasyA x Polkadot ハッカソンの優勝者が Web3 のセキュリティ確保のため YCombinator に採用される

EasyA x Polkadot Hackathon жеңімпаздары Web3 қауіпсіздігін қамтамасыз ету үшін YCombinator жүйесіне қабылданды

ຜູ້ຊະນະ EasyA x Polkadot Hackathon ຍອມຮັບກັບ YCombinator ເພື່ອຮັບປະກັນ Web3

Победители хакатона EasyA x Polkadot приняты в YCombinator для защиты Web3

Fituesit e EasyA x Polkadot Hackathon pranohen në YCombinator për të siguruar Web3

EasyA x Polkadot Hackathon جیتنے والوں کو Web3 کو محفوظ بنانے کے لیے YCombinator کو قبول کر لیا گیا

Những người chiến thắng cuộc thi Hackathon EasyA x Polkadot được YCombinator chấp nhận để bảo mật Web3

By James McDowall, Founding Partner, Arcanum Capital In the world of traditional finance, private equity firms have long been known for their old-school approach to investing, characterized by large capital deployments into established companies with the aim of generating substantial returns over a relatively long period. However, as the financial landscape undergoes a seismic shift with the rise of Web3 technologies and decentralized finance (DeFi), there is a growing realization that private equity firms need to adapt their strategies to remain competitive in this new era. More than almost anything else, private equity firms – especially in nascent, hyper-growth tech spaces – can benefit from the approach, which involves selecting projects that are strong in most areas but may be missing one piece that can be supplied by the network and resources of the VC group. Y Combinator One of the key advantages of operating this way is the newfound ability to open up engagement and focus on early-stage investing in startups and nascent companies. In the Web3 era, where disruptive technologies such as blockchain, decentralized applications (dApps), and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are reshaping industries, the Y Combinator approach provides firms with the foresight and tools to identify and ultimately invest in promising early-stage projects. By shifting focus towards early-stage investments, private equity firms can gain exposure to innovative technologies and business models that have the potential to deliver outsized returns in the long run. Of course, you don’t need me to tell you that the Y Combinator has been wildly effective in the modern era, with Y Combinator itself being one of the most successful venture capital firms in the world. The firm’s success can be attributed to its unique approach to investing, which involves providing startups with a range of resources, including mentorship, funding, and access to a vast network of investors and entrepreneurs. approach This approach has helped Y Combinator identify and invest in some of the more marquee startups in the world, including Airbnb, Dropbox, and Reddit, to name just a few. In response to this success, venture capital firms are now applying a similar structure and mentality to their investment strategy, with their reach extending beyond capital commitments. By providing startups with the ancillary resources they need to succeed, VC firms can help ensure their investments are as successful as possible, generally leading to greater returns. They can also proliferate their own circular economic ecosystem, which grows more important every day. Within their self-created and sustaining network, VC firms are then able to get more creative, thoughtful, and forward-looking with their projects, considering companies that lack the already proven mature growth and revenue traditionally needed and still need a few gaps filled within their model; for example, investing in great groups that may have amazing vision, but have largely ignored marketing/pr strategy, or one that lacks an advisory board or a few particularly-focused developers, or even one that is still searching for another key piece of their GTM and/or infrastructure. This approach is especially effective in global blockchain startups, where a hands-on, activist approach is critical for investors dealing with brilliant, but sometimes less-than-organized teams who are flying the plane while it's being built, so to speak. Let’s get granular here with great examples from a couple of Arcanum Capital’s portfolio companies: Two Case Studies: Kandola and Cross The Ages Kandola Kandola’s value proposition hit us right where we live: Building a decentralized data-as-a-service platform that guarantees data security, data integrity, and data privacy while catering to the real-time storage and retrieval needs of applications, transcending today’s digital economy with new opportunities for innovation and growth across sectors. The challenges reside in being able to handle the sheer volume, variability, and velocity that general purpose data transactions are known for and delivering on the Web3 promises of greater security, transparency, and accountability. Their platform brings data closer to Web3 smart contracts and DApps by enabling real-time analytics and AI training and deployment on unified data views (data lakes) that span across application-generated data, blockchain data, and outside-world data. What they are building is not only applicable to Web3, but it also caters to the storage and retrieval needs of IoT, healthcare, social, and gaming. In their case, it was primarily infrastructure, on top of our usual hands-on guidance with things like branding, that has really propelled them forward: Siddharth Banerjee, Founder and CEO of Kandola, said, “We are incredibly fortunate to have Arcanum Capital as one of our key VCs and early investors. Their unwavering support has been instrumental in propelling our project to new heights. Beyond providing crucial liquidity and financial backing, Arcanum has been a pillar of guidance and a bridge to invaluable network connections. Notably, their and especially James's proactive involvement in linking us with the node provider network during our testnet phase exemplifies his commitment to our success. James and Lucia consistently dedicate time to understand the intricacies of our project, offering insightful feedback and strategic advice. Their extensive connections within the Web3 community have opened doors for us, establishing our project in a well-respected circle. Working with Arcanum has been more than a financial partnership; it's been a collaborative journey filled with mentorship and support. We're grateful for their ongoing commitment and consider ourselves fortunate to have such a seasoned and well-connected ally in our corner.” Cross The Ages Arcanum Capital met Founder Sami at a conference in Lisbon and knew almost immediately we needed to back Cross The Ages (CTA). The on-the-spot pitch was captivating and compelling, and we quickly formed a strong long-term vision for what we needed to do with CTA. We advised them to build on Polygon, which they ultimately chose to do, giving us the leverage to approach Polygon Studios with the recommendation they follow us in with investment. They initially said no, but we were so confident in the company and our vision for it that we managed to convince them to overturn their decision and join us in backing CTA. Other investors who have followed Arcanum into Cross The Ages now include major game publisher Ubisoft, game-focused blockchain investment firm Animoca Brands, and in more recent news, covered by Cointelegraph, multi-billion dollar Japanese gaming goliath Square Enix, who also joined as an investor and strategic partner. The funding is being put towards game and app development programs, talent retention, and go-to-market activities, and with such high-caliber backers and top writers and artists from franchises such as Star Wars and Game of Thrones, we expect a very bright future for this portfolio company. Cross The Ages has been topping the App Store charts across several categories and geographies for several months, and we expect a significant uplift in valuation when it lists. "I have had the pleasure of working with Arcanum as a VC partner, and I can confidently say that their approach to investing is refreshingly different. Unlike typical predatory VCs, Arcanum is dedicated to adding value and support beyond just writing a cheque. I highly recommend Arcanum for any founder looking for a true partner in their journey to success." Said Sami Chlagou, Founder & CEO of Cross The Ages. About James McDowall Following a career as a professional athlete, James has been researching, investing in, and advising early and growth-stage technology entities since 2017. He has played pivotal roles in creative and strategic direction and business development and is experienced in conveying technological solutions to governments, regulators, and financial institutions. He gained invaluable alternative asset management knowledge and portfolio management experience during his CAIA studies and tenure with Swiss asset manager Tavis Digital in Zürich and has sat on the advisory board of the Swiss Impact Investment Association. He then Founded Arcanum Capital in 2020 and successfully raised and deployed Arcanum Emerging Technologies Fund I and has managed this successfully over the past 4 years. James excels in leveraging his strong global network of investors, entrepreneurs, and capital markets professionals to help finance and scale cutting-edge technology ventures. About Arcanum Capital is a venture capital firm focused on supporting enterprising and forward-thinking teams that are establishing decentralized networks and applications for the global blockchain ecosystem. Arcanum Capital's team consists of experienced investment professionals who understand what it takes to evaluate, incubate, and scale promising teams and ideas. Arcanum Capital We have been on the ground as operators, investors, and incubators in frontier and emerging markets, including India, since 2013, and have worked with startups, decentralized networks, and publicly listed companies. During this time, we have cultivated powerful networks and partnerships that are invaluable in helping our portfolio entities transition from idea to market and scale on the global stage.

How Venture Capital Firms Can Thrive by Tapping the Y Combinator Approach

কীভাবে ভেঞ্চার ক্যাপিটাল সংস্থাগুলি Y কম্বিনেটর পদ্ধতিতে ট্যাপ করে উন্নতি করতে পারে৷

Wie Risikokapitalfirmen durch den Y-Combinator-Ansatz erfolgreich sein können

Cómo pueden prosperar las empresas de capital riesgo aprovechando el enfoque Y Combinator

Comment les sociétés de capital-risque peuvent prospérer en exploitant l'approche Y Combinator

वाई कॉम्बिनेटर दृष्टिकोण का उपयोग करके वेंचर कैपिटल फर्म कैसे आगे बढ़ सकती हैं

ベンチャーキャピタル企業が Y コンビネーターのアプローチを活用してどのように成長できるか

Y Combinator 접근 방식을 활용하여 벤처 캐피털 회사가 성공할 수 있는 방법

Como as empresas de capital de risco podem prosperar aproveitando a abordagem do Y Combinator

Как фирмы венчурного капитала могут процветать, используя подход Y Combinator

Risk Sermayesi Firmaları Y Kombinatör Yaklaşımından Yararlanarak Nasıl Başarılı Olabilir?

Làm thế nào các công ty đầu tư mạo hiểm có thể phát triển mạnh bằng cách khai thác phương pháp kết hợp Y

风险投资公司如何利用 Y Combinator 方法蓬勃发展

Let's learn about via these 19 free stories. They are ordered by most time reading created on HackerNoon. Visit the to find the most read stories about any technology. Ycombinator /Learn Repo 1. How Silicon Valley Bank Went Under - And the Tech Execs Who Stepped Up As small-scale startups scrambled to make payroll while the future of the tech industry stood threatened, many of its prominent leaders looked for ways to help. 2. Mighty App: Fad or Rad? The Mighty App promises a lot and it might seem like a waste of money but, thanks to some quirks, it can be very useful when it comes to downloading at speed. 3. From Graduating College to Raising $1+ Million Dollars in 9 months I was studying Mechanical Engineering in my final year at college in the UK when I joined my roommate and his friend in building an app called Cluttr they started developing in the Summer of 2017. 4. How We Applied Twice for the Same YCombinator Batch Back in September, we were iterating on many ideas. We had come up with a 2-day invalidation process to make sure that we were not wasting too much time on bad ideas. 5. How We Pivoted 3 times In The 1st Month of YC If you ever think about joining YC, be intentional about the value you want to get from it. 6. Five Tips for Applying to YC 2021 Tips and resources for applying to Y Combinator 7. How to Prepare for your Y Combinator Interview Tick tock, it’s the day the YC interview invitation is sent out. I remember anxiously waiting for my startup’s (Cotter) invite. 8. Top 5 Podcasts for Startup Founders Top 5 Podcasts for Startup Founders in December packed with first-hand industry experience. 9. How Serverless Empowered Us to Accomplish More with Less We explore how we use Serverless at Courier, review some Serverless basics, and show how Serverless has empowered our team to accomplish more w 10. The 10 Things I’ve Learned Attending Y Combinator Startup School 2020 Y Combinator shouldn’t need any presentation, but just in case, let me give a quick intro. 11. Releaf: Evolution of African Agritech Releaf is Y-combinator African startup who are an agritech and supply chain startup. They do B2B work, digital banking, aid and geo-spatial tech for farmers. 12. How My Startup Got New Funding from Andreessen Horowitz We are very excited to announce that we have raised a new round of funding led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) with participation from Y Combinator Continuity. 13. The Top 4 Startup Accelerators: Is Y Combinator Still the Best? Where is the next Facebook, Google or Postmates coming from and why you shouldn’t choose Y Combinator? A comparison of the world’s top 4 startup accelerators 14. The Ultimate Guide to YCombinator Interview Preparation During my own preparation for Winter 2018 class interviews, I’ve reviewed every public resource on the topic and did over 20 practice interviews with Y Combinator alums. Everything I’ve learned is summarized below. This guide is my personal take and doesn’t represent an official position of YC. 15. Everything you need to know about YCombinator S19 startups It is not a secret to anyone that YCombinator is the most successful accelerator in the world. They have made well over 2,538 investments. 16. 6 Lessons From YC Startup School Delhi SMB Meetup #1 YC Startup School’s Delhi founders who work for SMBs met online to share the problems they were working on and what they learnt while building for SMBs. For the first meetup, we had mouve.app, restat.co, designforpeople.in, and Uplift Inc. 17. 10 Steps to Build a High-Value Startup with $44k Free Credits 10 steps to build a high value start up with $44k free credits and the best tools out there 18. Founders at Work: 150+ YCombinator Founders’ Stories Jessica Livingston's book "Founders at work" (2007, 32 stories) inspired thousands of founders to start their startups. 19. How Early Stage Startups Can Leverage Startup Incubators A Startup Incubator is a collaborative organisation designed to support new startups that are looking to validate their formed product vision. Thank you for checking out the 19 most read stories about Ycombinator on HackerNoon. to find the most read stories about any technology. Visit the /Learn Repo

19 Stories To Learn About Ycombinator

Founders at Work: 150+ YCombinator Founders’ Stories

Where is the next Facebook, Google or Postmates coming from and why you shouldn’t choose Y Combinator? A comparison of the world’s top 4 startup accelerators While many start-up accelerators and business incubators have paused accepting applications due to the pandemic, the world’s top four accelerators continue the search for what’s next. So, who are the top four, what they are, what are their terms and conditions, how they differentiate from each other — and most importantly, which one should you choose? Accelerators help talented entrepreneurs to grow quickly, find their market, get customers and so much more. Typically, they will take a small share of the business, or they may help at no cost at all. Sometimes, entrepreneurs are equipped with only the idea and a desire for a global scale. This is done through mentoring, to help support their current work, provide access and meetings with decision-makers of large corporations, as well as opening direct access to funding. What do the world’s top 4 accelerators look like? Accelerators are often judged by the success and valuation of companies that have been through their program. Many could become stars of IT on their own merits, however, statistics show that generally, these programs do help. For the calculations in the article, I use data from the accelerators’ own, as well as the data from well-known business media and venture resources: Inc, TechCrunch, Seed DB, CrunchBase, CB Insights, Forbes, and others. Y Combinator At least 21 unicorns (companies worth over $1 billion) grew out of companies that passed this program. This is 3.88% of firms with such a capitalization in the world. Alumni include Airbnb, Stripe, Reddit, Twitch, Instacart, and others. Y Combinator’s also includes 102 companies with valuations above $150 million. Investors in Y Combinator startups often include the most famous venture capital funds — Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, Sequoia and Accel. all track record The total capitalization of companies that have passed the Y Combinator accelerator program is over $155 billion, up by almost 50% since the beginning of 2019. Jobs created from companies in the fund’s portfolio doubled to over 50K high-paying jobs to the economy in the same timeframe. nearly 500 Startups A mentoring session of Jordanian startups. Credit: 500 Startups With new managing partner Tony Wang coming in the last half of 2019, 500 Startups is stepping up their game and their portfolio, going from ten unicorns to 19. The most notable are: SendGrid’s email services, Twilio text message notifications, the graphic utility Canva, and the Ukrainian GitLab, where Y Combinator is also an investor. To date, the 500 Startups portfolio includes at least 85 companies with a valuation above $100 million. The strategic partners of 500 startups are the UAE-based SHUAA Capital (previously ADFG fund), in 2018. The total amount of the accelerator fund’s committed capital is $600 million according to 500 startups spokeswoman Zina Moukheiber. joined Techstars and AngelPad round out the top four in the world Techstars currently has at least 3 unicorns, including cloud service provider DigitalOcean, SendGrid and Twilio, as well as 37 “hundred millionaires” as of February 2019. The total valuation of companies in their portfolio is $29.1 billion as of September 2020 according to Techstars spokeswoman Ali Donnermeyer. The total Techstars funds available for investing in startups were $558 million as of July 2019. Until 2018, the AngelPad accelerator shared first place with Y Combinator in the MIT/Brown University Seed Accelerator several years in a row. That is the reason I added it here. The portfolio includes three unicorns  —  Postmates delivery service and co-investments in SendGrid and Twilio. In early March 2018, AngelPad raised $35 million to invest in startups to the SEC. ranking according A quick chart to compare the chances of becoming a company with a valuation of $100M Today, Y Combinator $125K for a 7% stake in the startup, down from the $150K offered in 2019. It is interesting to note that until 2013, Yuri Milner’s DST fund, together with SV Angel, automatically invested $150K in the accelerator’s graduates. The startups received an additional $15K-$20K from Y Combinator. After 2013, Milner was replaced by Khosla Ventures. offers 500 Startups young companies $150K for a 6% stake, and $37.5K is immediately deducted for participation in the educational program. The startup then receives the remaining $112.5K. give Techstars gets a 6% stake for providing graduates with a $100K convertible note. At the start of the program, the team is also given a $20K scholarship for living expenses. AngelPad offers $120K in exchange for a 7% stake in the $120K startup. Program features Techstars, 500 Startups, and AngelPad provide a physical location where startup founders, curators, and program mentors work side-by-side, claiming this as one of their advantages. With the advent of COVID-19, the programs were moved online, making this benefit null. Y Combinator already allowed teams to work from home so that nothing distracts from coding and user engagement. All acceleration programs might give their startups free credits to Amazon, DigitalOcean, and AdWords services, a value that can tally up to hundreds of thousands of dollars but is an often overlooked benefit. Acceleration program terms and conditions Dinner and office hours online at Y Combinator Y Combinator visits select universities during their YC Bio Tour. Credit: UCI The classic Y Combinator program consists of weekly lunches, office hours and a demo day. Alumni of past batches and founders of companies like Stripe or Airbnb are invited to lunches. They give motivating advice and share their experience in increasing sales, scaling the company, etc. During office hours, they discuss strategy and focus with successful graduates, employees and partners of the accelerator. This includes group meetings with colleagues and mentors to address urgent issues. Demo Day is the culmination of the program. It lasts from two to three days. Teams have one minute to get the audience interested in the results of their three months in the race. In the summer of 2019, over the course of two days, 450 investors viewed 174 alumni teams. This year’s Demo Day was held entirely online, and while 198 teams presented, the number of views and investor-participants was not shared. Beginning in winter 2020, participation in the batches and all programs fully to be online. shifted Techstars powerful mentorship programs At one of the Techstars events. Credit: Startup Weekend Blumenau At Techstars, unlike Y Combinator, the program is divided into several phases, where startups work with mentors: setting and execution of their goals, an educational program and a Demo Day. In the first month, startups receive the maximum product and market feedback from daily meetings with experts. They take part in short rounds of speed dating, meeting with numerous startups and mentors to choose the right partners and open conversations with their permanent mentors. Educational content includes lectures and masterclasses on market research, legal subtleties and other aspects related to the work of a young company. The second month is spent on product building and customer acquisition. The last month is preparation for Demo Day: presentations, raising money, growth and scaling. The audience for Demo Day is about 400 spectators, who are mostly private investors, funds, corporations, business angels. Around 30 and 50 startups are expected to take the stage and present. Since April 2020, Demo Days and other programs are virtually. held Educational programs at 500 Startups and a personal approach at AngelPad 500 Startups is structured similarly to Techstars and focuses on building up missing competencies and skills with over 200 hours of educational live content. The training is divided into weeks, each one devoted to lectures and workshops on an individual topic. AngelPad has an alternative approach. Instead of aggressively scaling the accelerator to other cities and overseas and working with hundreds of teams at the same time, the team works with a small group of up to 15 startups. AngelPad’s job is to help you individually with sales and product. Demo Day does classic show pitches — the participants immediately communicate face to face with those investors who, according to the organizers, are most suitable for each other. not include Investment volumes A comparison of the committed capital and the funding the accelerator's portfolio startups receive The number of companies invested in by Y Combinator, Techstars, 500 Startups and AngelPad is 2,000, 2,200, 2,400 and 150 companies respectively, according to the accelerators. Total funding per accelerator exceeds billion for Y Combinator, $10.4 billion for Techstars, $2.35 billion for 500 Startups and $2.2 billion for AngelPad. $38.66 Individual companies received an average of $17.9 million, $4.7 million, $3.4 million and $14 million in investments over the entire period of activity accordingly. These figures are approximate based on research on aforementioned venture capital sites such as Crunchbase and may not include undisclosed deals. The primary goal and result for a startup are to deliver revenue to investors, so it is important to include in this review the number of exits. Selling a startup to a large company or going public allows investors to sell a stake in it. Y Combinator made exits for approximately . According to public data, Techstars has exits for a total of approximately . For 500 Startups, the number of exits was , while AngelPad boasts 72 exits of its alums. 757 $6 billion 583 $4.75 billion 803 Funding after Demo Day Residents of AngelPad during their spare time. Credit: angelpad.com After Demo Day, startups at Y Combinator and 500 Startups raise an average of $1.5 million-$2 million, and for Techstars that number is about $1 million. No data is available for AngelPad. According to , co-investor of more than 60 Y Combinator alumni, 90–95% of the participants in each set of this accelerator receive investments. This proves that being accepted not only gives startups new connections, but also a boost in perception, serving as a positive indicator for investors that a young company has great potential. Terrence Yang What are the selection criteria and which program to choose? For the initial selection, you must have an excellent-to-fluent command of the English language. Your questionnaire should be specific, no a copy-paste answers here, of course, you need an idea and an understanding of its implementation. Citizenship and other parameters do not matter. These accelerators are also held by companies that have founders from all over the world. For example, Y Combinator alumni come from countries, and 500 Startups’ come from 75 countries. 53 focuses on fanatical geeks with a vision, self-learning on the fly, non-trivial problem solving, and acquiring and engaging users with the product or service. Y Combinator A strong benefit of is that they boost startups with access to a team of experts to build a viable idea, for companies that have a desire to conquer the American market and no experience setting up a company in the United States. 500 Startups For those whose business is concentrated outside of Silicon Valley, the regional programs are most suitable. If you’re looking for quality, focused work with a qualified mentor, AngelPad is your go-to. Techstars Statistics show that receives 4,000 applications annually. And according to unconfirmed reports, Y Combinator receives 27,000 applications, Techstars gets 12,000, and 500 Startups a total of 18,000 applications. Less than 1% of applicants are accepted into the programs. AngelPad These four startup programs don’t always make sense for everyone. Some accelerators provide free participation or do not require a share. Before embarking on a long journey, research what’s best for you and your idea by watching lectures from the founders of Y Combinator, the creator of Gmail and others, available on YouTube. All data is current as of September 20, 2020 unless otherwise indicated. #startups #accelerator #funding #fundraising #entrepreneurship #500startups #ycombinator #angelpad #techstars #yc #investment Also published at https://medium.com/@yuriy.yatsiv/where-is-the-next-facebook-google-or-postmates-coming-from-and-why-you-shouldnt-choose-y-7052bfed7f85

The Top 4 Startup Accelerators: Is Y Combinator Still the Best?

Tick tock, it’s the day the YC interview invitation is sent out. I remember anxiously waiting for my startup’s ( ) invite. Cotter I read from HN and Reddit that the invite was supposed to be sent out around 9 PM - 12 AM PT. We got ours at 9:16 PM and immediately booked a slot for the interview. If you got the invite, congratulations! But as Kobe said, “Job’s not finished”. So start preparing ASAP! Here’s how the Cotter team prepared. Perfect Your 1-Liner As expected, that was the first question that we got during our interview. To craft a good 1-liner, you need to be able to explain what your company does and who you are serving using plain English. If you can use existing companies to describe your business go for it. Here are a few examples: If you are replicating an existing business model for a different country go for "We are building Robinhood for Country X".If your product does something similar to an existing product go for "We are building Shopify for online schools". If you can't or you're building something entirely new, don't force it. Try to construct your 1-liner using this template "We are building X (what does your company do) for Y (who does your product serve)". After you construct your 1-liner, go ask YC founders for feedback. Feel free to DM me on Twitter @ . itsKevinChandra Educate Them YC partners aren't always knowledgable in what you do; you are the expert. The questions that they ask will revolve around them wanting to learn more from you. So, like your 1-liner, make sure that your answers are informative, concise, and short. Keep in mind that every YC interview is going to be different. It depends on your industry, what stage you are in, where you are doing business, and lots more! You will never be able to control what the partners ask. Some of the questions from templates like will appear. However, here's a more realistic expectation. this If you haven't launched your product then prepare to educate them about: 1. The barrier to entry and how you are uniquely positioned to break through that barrier. 2. What the market looks like and how your product uniquely solves a problem for that market. 3. Why your team is the winning team. If you have launched your product and it has traction then prepare your market insights like: 1. How did you get your users? Who are they? Where are they? 2. How are they using your product? Are they hacking your product to do more? 3. How much have you improved your users' lives? Why Your Team is the Chosen One Remember that the founders matter more than the idea and YC knows that. So explain to them why your team is the Chosen One. There are numerous YC success stories to back this such as the classic and most recently Segment. AirBnB story A lot of startups fail because of conflict between the co-founders, tell them why your team will stick together through thick and thin. Have you worked together previously? Tell them why each member is critical to the founding team. Why do you have 2/3/4/5 founders in the team? What are their roles? What makes your team uniquely positioned to win? Do you have relevant experience? Do you have patents? Do you hold a license in a regulated industry? Practice and Enjoy the Experience! I would really advise doing mock interviews with YC founders if you get the chance. To start, you can DM me @ . itsKevinChandra If not, compile a document comprised of questions that you think you will be asked and make sure you have informative, concise, and short answers. If you run out, answer . these questions To keep your mind at peace, they wouldn't ask questions that you shouldn't already know the answers to. Lastly, good luck from the Cotter team! Schedule a Mock Interview DM me @ itsKevinChandra #ShamelessPlug If you want to have a passwordless auth for your app come check out or have any questions about authentication reach out to us here: Cotter Email: team@cotter.app Twitter: @ cotterapp Slack: https://join.slack.com/t/askcotter/shared_invite/zt-dxzf311g-5Mp3~odZNB2DwYaxIJ1dJA

How to Prepare for your Y Combinator Interview

shouldn’t need any presentation, but just in case, let me give a quick intro. Y Combinator Y Combinator is an American seed accelerator launched in March 2005. It has been used to launch over 2,000 companies including Stripe, Airbnb, Twitch, DoorDash, Coinbase, Instacart, and Dropbox, to name a few. The combined valuation of the top was over $155 billion as of October, 2019. YC companies While nowadays Y Combinator includes mentors and coaches coming from the gotha of the startup elite, the mind behind the company is , a very well known tech-guru that I would credit for the contribution he made to language and for the launch of , among all his other achievements. Paul Graham Lisp Hacker News I was tracking down Y Combinator Startup School (YCSS) for a couple of years, and well, this time was the right one. The 8-week online course for startups is totally free, and from 2019 it’s held twice a year, so it’s not so hard to get a spot. All you need is to send some information about yourself and your project and grant some commitment. There aren’t specific milestones to pass, like exams or things like that but you need to attend a number of peer reviews to graduate. In the end, the value of this course it’s mostly up to yourself: if you’re willing to study the lectures, take parte in the forums and AMA sesh, interact with other students and attend the video lessons, it’s definitely worth your time. Otherwise, it’s no more useful than scrolling a  Reddit thread ( ). /r/startups The YCSS is structured in an eight-week time frame. Each week you have to submit your goals for the week and the main challenges you are facing. This is the base for the bi-weekly peer review. Then there are the lectures, videos and live sessions with the coaches. Y Combinator even created a dashboard where you can handle the totality of the course, with links to forums, special deals, Telegram group chat, video lessons, Q&A, and more. A video conference room is integrated as well, so you don't need any other tool than a laptop with an internet connection. I liked the YCSS pretty much, considering that it’s a free program. It also provides a good insight over Y Combinator method and the approach of their mentors. I was positively impressed by diversity within the classes: participants were from Indonesia, Thailand, India, North Africa, Russia, of course a lot were from the US West Coast (be ready to attend video confo at wee hours of the morning). And no matter what part of the world you come from, what background you have, what project you are working on: for better or worse we are all facing the same problems, with the same difficulties and constraints. As a side comment, I would not have minded to have a little bit of challenges here and there. A sort of final examination is something that is missing at the moment. But let’s jump back to the purpose of this post. What the hell did I learn during this process? I had many A-HA moments, but let me sum up my 10 most important takes. 1. Talk to your users: Talking to your users is essential. Perhaps the most important thing you should do. You would never ever make a product that nobody wants. Worst, to spend billions of marketing to push it down the customers’ throat. As you may know, having no market is still the first reason startups fail, accounting for more than 40% of the deaths. YCSS program is stressing a lot on that point, even asking you how many surveys you made and what feedback you got from your customers on a weekly basis. You have to become a problem seeker. You need to understand people's real problems. Don’t look for loonshot solutions addressing nobody issues. “Make something people want.” If this list would had to be a single bullet point, it would have been this one. 2. It’s not your customers’ job to give you solutions: A common mistake I see almost everyday it’s asking people what they want, instead of asking them which problems they have. “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses”, as Henry Ford said. It's not up to your users to tell you what they want, they just have to tell you their problems. Then it’s your job to find solutions for them. You are the product owner, not them. 3. No problem is too big to be a show-stopper: No problem is too big to have no workaround around it. During the peer reviews sessions, we discussed very different problems and issues each one of us was having at the time. And believe me, there were some hella big problems coming out. But the mood was always very good and positive. Bigger problems just need bigger workarounds. And that’s good. Let’s keep it going. 4. MVP everything: Don’t even think about spending half a year to develop a finite product. MVP, Minimum Viable Products, is your to-go word. Start small, test, develop, implement, repeat. Don’t waste away your money and your time to work on a product nobody wants or that would take so long to develop that, once it gets to the market, it would be already obsolete. 5. ABS - Always be Shipping Ship early, ship often, ship no-f*ckin-matter what. Design short product sprints, with frequent deploy. If it takes you six months to get to your first deployment in the production environment, your startup is probably going to be dead before you  get another chance to launch. 6. Forget about that “it doesn’t scale” thing: Y Combinator mentors told us this little story: it was rather common to find post-MBA folks who used to discard every single startup pitch they were evaluating by commenting “well, it doesn’t scale”. As a startup in its early stage, please, don’t deal with that. Ok your idea doesn't scale. Fine with that. It’s the starting point for everybody. First validate the concept, then worry about scaling your business. Some of the most valuable, and, well, scalable, startups on the market, started by doing things by hands or mimicking features they still had not. Who cares about that. In a world where the most ground-breaking tech is just next door, there's plenty of room to get your products to scale later on. 7. “Good product instincts” is a trap: Get rid of the  “I’m trusting my guts” BS asap. Nobody has it, and Steve Jobs is dead. Measure all your experiments and don’t rely on “instinct”, “guts”, or “good taste”. You may be surprised by the results, discovering that the ugly-looking template is converting way more than the polished, trendy one, because, well, the former has a better CTA. 8. Build a solid Company Culture: Company culture is often ignored by startups. The mood is like, “money first, culture later”. But well, there is no “later”. You have to set up culture in the very early stage of your company. It’s easy to share a culture statement among ten people, but then try to do it when the company grows to one hundred employees. Culture should work as a de-facto guideline: this is how we behave when there aren't further rules around. And culture should guide you in hiring your first employee, getting your first customer, dealing with product issues, and so on. Remember how much the simple “don’t be evil” quote meant to Google employees, driving their business and growth strategies for almost a decade. So don’t forget about culture and settle it down as soon as possible. 9. Leaders don't brag. You can’t say “I am a good leader”. That's something other people have to say. Do you want to find who’s a true leader? Ask the people around them, who they work with, but also their friends, the bartender where they have their coffee, their neighbors. Leadership is not something you turn on or off when you enter the office. And, by the same means, be careful when someone is claiming out loud their leadership skills. 10. Don’t get sad: This was from YC President Geoff Ralston’s parting advice, during the last lesson of the course. I loved that one. I never bought into the “creating startups is the coolest thing in the world” adage. Creating a biz from scratches is hard, it’s often painful. Things can go disastrously wrong in a startup and the founders feel sadder and sadder. And sadness leads to inaction. It leads to apathy. It leads to depression.  Don't do that. Don't get sad. Go, do, write code. Talk to users. Make your  product better. Always make forward progress in spite of sadness, anger, frustration. In the end it’s not the best that succeed, but the more resilient and prone to rise up failure after failure. And help others, too. If you see someone in trouble, another entrepreneur in distress, reach out to them. We live in an open ecosystem, let it thrive. End notes: "Keep it going" . Well, that’s it. Hopefully you found some inspiration and hint in my story. At least now you know a little bit better what this YCSS is about and around which pillars the course is built. If there’s something you’d like to discuss further, write me in the comments! Get back to work now. And don’t quit!

The 10 Things I’ve Learned Attending Y Combinator Startup School 2020

It is not a secret to anyone that YCombinator is the most successful accelerator in the world. They have made well over . 2,538 investments YCombinator runs two programs annually: during the summer and winter, named accordingly. The latest Summer 2019 batch of startups has graduated just under 2 weeks ago. YCombinator is also, not only the most well-known accelerator, but by far the most profitable one. According to the : 15 YC alumni's are valued at over $1B and over 70 YC alumni's are valued at over $100M. statistics back in 2018 Many YC alumni companies become trendsetters. They are known to form new product segments and dominate them. With my “live curious” attitude in life, I decided to dive deeper into the most recent S19 batch of the chosen ones. Interestingly, that 197 companies were accepted into the program, but only 166 made it to the demo day. By the way, here is a good short description of companies by TechCrunch: companies presented during and companies presented during . day one day two The level of variousness of the information on 166 different companies is quite high, so I started to look for a service or a tool that would give me the possibility to structure and view the statistics in a more detailed way. There are many great services which can help you to learn more about YC alumni. For instance: - has a very cool Top 100 company list features. YCBD - allows you to query on the companies for more information on the social media or current company status. Golden - tracks dead and flourishing companies. YClist The problem with all of them is that none of them has enough information on the latest batch. Besides, I was more interested in the trend analytics, rather than predicting the future of the startups. So I made some research on my own and tried to accumulate interesting and fun facts about all S19 YCombinator startups. The document is open and available to everyone. If you need this data for your research, please go ahead and use it. . Here is the doc You can make your own copy (if you'd like so). During my research on every of 166 companies, I started seeing clear trends. For instance, 4 companies clearly stood out, due to having no accessible information on their founders. None. Zero. Of course, you can always make an extra mile and inquire on the company incorporation documents, or even reach out to YCombinator itself. But to me, there are 4 antisocial companies on the list. 77 companies out of 166 were incorporated by first-time founders. It means that, 89 companies on the list have at least one of the founders with a prior founding experience. Out of 166 companies, only 55 have their domain extensions, which are not “.com”. So “.com” is still a go-ahead choice. 83 companies were founded in 2019. It means that exactly 50% of the companies are more than 1 year old. There are 31 companies with only 1 founder. 94 companies with 2 founders, 27 companies with 3 founders, and only 9 companies with 4 founders. In terms of the founders' origin. Of course, the US dominates with 102 companies, whose founders are from the States themselves. However, we can see that YCombinator is supporting diversity efforts. In S19 batch 27 countries were being presented by the founders. The most popular country after the US is Canada - with 9 companies being in the batch. 72% (119) companies claim that there are generating revenue now. The fun question is: what is the most trendy color scheme? Is there one? Well, 30% of the companies have more than 1 color in their color scheme. But corporate blue is still the most popular or safe choice, as 37 companies chose to use it. The least popular main color is yellow, with only two companies using it extensively. What can any of these statistics tell us? Besides the obvious thought: if they could do it, you can do it. I’d say just one: no one knows if a startup will be successful or not. Many factors can minimize the risk, but once again, nobody knows for sure. That is why Y Combinator experiments with the selection of best in their diversity and diversity of their founders experience.

Everything you need to know about YCombinator S19 startups

During my own preparation for Winter 2018 class interviews, I’ve reviewed every public resource on the topic and did over 20 practice interviews with Y Combinator alums. Everything I’ve learned is summarized below. This guide is my personal take and doesn’t represent an official position of YC. Along with this guide, you can also read and reuse our YC interview answers . To get more help, join a chat community of startups applying to YC . Answers development The core of your preparation process is writing a document with all anticipated questions and your answers to them. Start with the items below, then expand by adding answers to new questions asked at your practice interviews. Answers document. Your first sentence in the interview is either a solution description or value proposition. It should be 4–8 words long and pass the “mom’s test”, i.e. your parents should be able to repeat it back to you. Opening description. Define 3 core strength points in advance. Steer conversation to hit them all, sometimes even regardless of questions.Types of strength: revenue/growth/traction, domain expertise/done this before, insight aka “a-ha moment”, market size.Consider repeating or rephrasing your top three points when you aren’t sure they landed well the first time.Test your strength points: Will someone be excited about your company if she/he only hears the one-line description and three strength points? Strength points. Those are anecdotes, quotes, or factoids that receive consistent “a-ha” and “hmm.. interesting” reactions during your practice runs. Insights. Know your 2–3 key weakness areas and prepare short, crisp answers to most common concerns.For every question that you don’t answer with a strength point or an insight, limit yourself to one sentence. You want to maximize the time for strength discussion, not secondary issues. If you use the second sentence, it should go back to strengths or insights. Defense. How to write strong answers Use a lot of factoids and numbers. Your answers document should have at least 20–30 answers with numbers. Whenever possible, eliminate verbs from answers. E.g. “What’s your go-to-market?” — “A, then B, then C”.Use simple words and examples, avoid buzzwords or abstract concepts. For questions on weakness areas, acknowledge or defend it in one sentence, then go back to strengths in the second. Use examples and facts over forward-looking plans. “In the past, we’ve solved it by X with results Y”.Explain implications: “if we achieve X (hard, but possible technical achievement), then we will get Y (major business win)”. Whenever possible, use primary data from customers instead of analogies. Generally, YCombinator doesn’t see analogy-based arguments as reliable or strong.Avoid top-down market sizing. Either do bottom-up or close comparables. “Sell your co-founder”, be ready to tell why your partner is great. Practice runs Schedule at least 10–20 practice runs. For mock interviews, ask investors and founders you already know, YC alums from your city / country / university, YC alums in your industry or with a similar business model, and YC alums who volunteer to do practice interviews on Twitter. You don’t need an intro. Ask early, at least 7–10 days before your interview day. Take notes and rewrite your answers after each practice run. Do a debrief with each mock interviewer. Ask which answers were clear and strong, and which ones were not. Discuss how to improve your individual answers. Iterate on your top strength points, unique insights/anecdotes, and defense answers. Additionally, watch YC’s public office hours (links below) to get a feel of YC interview format. Interview day Arrive early, identify your room and learn who is on your panel, research panel partners in the remaining time. Make new friends with fellow applicants. Have the demo ready on the laptop with all important screens in multiple tabs. Don’t rely on YC WiFi.Assume that YC partners have no prior knowledge. Review partner’s bios in advance, identify partners who can become supporters due to their personal interest in your space. From YC’s standpoint, the purpose of the interview is to extract as much info as possible in 10min. At least one of YC partners will look closely for body language and nonverbal signals. Expect 40–80 questions in 10 minutes, 8–12 seconds per question-and-answer round. Be ready for constant interruptions (even after the first 2–3 words of response). Be ready for unique questions outside of your list. Be ready for parallel interview with multiple co-founders (not very common). Be ready for a narrow and deep drill on a single question, most likely related to your biggest weakness. Logistics and expectations. Talk fast, but not super fast. Feel happy, high-energy, and excited to pursue the opportunity. Be casual and friendly, maintain eye contact. Be confident, yet humble. Confident and concise = formidable. A few weak answers are ok. A long weak answer is much worse than a short acknowledgment like “I don’t know” or “we plan to work on this”. Don’t be too defensive, show coachability. Consider repeating or rephrasing your top three points, if they weren’t well received the first time. Most answers should be one sentence, some can be two sentences. Limit yourself to only 2–3 longer replies throughout the interview. Don’t interrupt each other, don’t argue on unexpected questions. Instead, say “yes and …” or “and I’ll add to this…” to continue after your co-founder. When disagreeing with YC partner’s statement, either give counter-facts or accept it as a hypothesis to test. Don’t make straight deflections. Answer the question asked, before changing direction. When challenged on critical hypotheses for your business, be ready to push back with crisp defense and facts. When the conversation goes sideways, try to steer it back to strengths, e.g. “and I want to make sure you hear this…”. Interview time. Interesting problem. Ideally, unique or novel. Otherwise, a new insight or approach. Compelling value proposition. Clear and concise solution description. Clarity on how the hard parts of the solution work. Inspiring mission. Market size and dynamics. A small but rapidly growing market is always compelling. Insightful ideas for overcoming market-specific concerns. Activation of “spidey sense” i.e. “hmm… something interesting should happen in this space” feeling. Team with deep relevant expertise and domain knowledge. Strong communication skills: crisp, short, clear answers. Competitive landscape fluency. Proven rapid pace of making progress. Energy and resourcefulness, “get things done” attitude. Coachability, being good at taking feedback constructively. Determined, yet flexible. Original thinking and learning ability. Unconventional points of view and insights directly from customers. Positive team dynamics, no interruptions or arguing, alignment on vision. Low chance of founder conflict. Good English and easy-to-understand accent, no language barriers in communication. Ability to inspire and recruit star team. Make YC partners want to work for you. Can grow into “forces of nature”. Direct path to building momentum by the end of YC program aka “become a hot seed deal”. Direct path to hitting high revenue in 2–3 years aka “getting big”. Expected YC evaluation criteria. Y Combinator Interview Resources , , , , . Official resources: list of partners preparation advice preparation advice video old advice Michael Seibel’s 7 points , , , , , , , , , , , , . Advice from alums: Quora thread Kwindla Hultman Kramer Henrik Zillmer Tristan Zier Barak Ben Ezer Scott Wheeler David Rusenko Sumon Sadhu Robby Walker Natalie Bartlett Fabrizio Buzeto GetAccept Gareth MacLeod , , , , . Question collections: PG Simulator Aptible Brad Flora TechCrunch QZ , , , , , , , , , . Public office hours: SS 2011 SS 2013 SS 2014 SS 2014 NYC TNW 2014 SS 2016 SS 2016 SC17–1 SC17–2 SC17–3 Acknowledgments I am forever grateful to everyone who helped us through the process: Hrachik Adjamian, Daniel Ahmadizadeh, Andrew Arruda, Delian Asparouhov, Chas Ballew, Kirill Belov, Eva Breitenbach, Matt Brezina, Tom Broderick, Levon Brutyan, Jeremy Cai, Dan Carroll, Deepak Chhugani, Nick DeMonner, Dmitry Dumik, Evan Farrell, Herbie Fu, Jim Gibbs, Anton Gladkoborodov, Allan Grant, Vlad Gurgov, Chetan Jhaveri, Ryan Johnson, Dave Kim, Alexander Kim, Kwindla Hultman Kramer, Sam Lang, Clarence Leung, Bowen Lu, Max Musing, Ivan Novikov, Thomas Pun, Roberto Riccio, Wen Sang, Boris Silver, Preston Silverman, Zac Townsend, Brett Van Zuiden, James Vaughan, Praveen Venkatesan, Tracy Young, Diana Zink. Good luck! To get more help, join a . I am frequently there to help with any preparation questions you might have. chat community of startups applying to YCombinator

The Ultimate Guide to YCombinator Interview Preparation

Late last year, my team participated in the much talked-about Y Combinator Startup School on behalf of our startup, Affine Finance. We were assigned a great mentor (former C-level executive at Zynga and a startup advisor at multiple other prominent accelerators). It was a 10-week program, with weekly live sessions conducted both in-person and online (since I was close to YC’s Mountain View offices, I ended up attending most of the sessions in-person). The live sessions touched upon a broad range of topics — everything from legal matters to design and product development. YC had grouped the startups that were a part of the program into teams of 10–15 companies. In order to “graduate”, the teams were required to: Do weekly mentor office hours (a 2-hour group call with our mentor with all startups in our group) Provide weekly company updates reporting our week-over-week growth for a self-selected metric We were incredibly lucky to be assigned a great mentor for our startup as well as a highly engaged peer group. We consistently heard stories of mentors going MIA, peers who had stopped participating etc. which took away from their overall program experience. In effect, ! while the program was well-designed by the YC team, the execution of it largely fell upon the mentors and the startups themselves The overall learnings from the program far exceeded my expectations. By the time we joined, we had been “hacking away” at our ideas for almost a year and I didn’t expect to learn anything new besides the conventional wisdom / talking points, but I was proven wrong by the YC folks very early on! The live sessions were great, but what made the program truly effective was combining them with the mentoring session, and the peer group community. For the latter, the internal YC forums were OK but the Slack groups (formed by the startups directly) were even better and provided great value. Case in point: the Bay Area group still organizes monthly BBQ meetups for the YC SS startups — few months after the official YC program ended! Below I have highlighted seven key takeaways for our team, which are largely based on our own experience of the program and the stage of our company when we went through it. I’m sure other founders would have had different takeaways based on their own experience. I. “Make something people want”: you need to live and breathe the YC motto Startups mostly fail because they work on building products that no one wants. Within the insanity of Silicon Valley, it’s often easy for founders to lose their way (which we were also guilty of at Affine) by prioritizing the wrong things — such as fundraising, over-building products/features, attacking “white spaces” without verifying the real market needs (working on ideas that only seem good on paper) — and not being laser focused on the end customers. : Do you have the right team? Right mix of expertise, camaraderie, experience, passion for the industry, passion for solving problems, passion for starting a company. Make Do they really want this? Continuous market validation, customer feedback, asking the right questions (“will you pay $x for this” vs “would you try this / like to use this”) to the right people. Something people want: II. Launch now!! Launching fast was something the YC team and the mentors stressed on a lot. The importance of launching early cannot be overstated — you cannot truly figure out what your customers want until you launch and get in front of them. But… my product is almost ready but I still need to add some features! …You should have launched a long time ago! Launch now and include those features in the next update! But… my product is not yet finished!! …Launch limited pilots with customers whose needs are so great that they are willing to work with a broken or incomplete product — this will help guide you on what to add/modify, and what features you can drop from your product roadmap. This could save you 100s of hours and potentially result in early revenue and other valuable customer feedback. But… I haven’t even started building my product yet!! …You have a lot of options here: Build a product outline or wireframes, and use those to get feedback from potential customers on specific needs / features; or try to get a potential customer to finance your product development with an “agency approach” where you build their solution but retain the IP; or try to pre-sell product licenses at a discount prior to building your product to test your customers’ ability to pay, and their urgency to solve the problem. While this advice may not be applicable to a very small number of startups, for most startups there is no excuse not to launch today. III. Product-Market Fit — the definition is in the eye of the beholder (or the investor!) A lot of the guest speakers were asked when they found “Product-Market Fit” (PMF) and everyone had their own variation of the answer (interestingly, none of them answered they haven’t found it yet IIRC). The answer to “How do I know when I have PMF?” is highly complicated and depends on each startup’s business model and unique circumstances. Many startups find PMF early on, and many never find it during their company life cycle (including the “successful startups” with successful exits). Some early-stage investors only invest in startups after they have found their PMF, some specifically claim to fund startups to help them find their PMF, with no consistent definition on what PMF really is. After listening to multiple definitions and views, our thoughts on PMF loosely reflect those of the YC team: you have found Product-Market Fit if i. you are making what people want (from takeaway #1 above; your customers would be VERY upset/miserable if your product didn’t exist), and ii. your demand is outstripping supply such that you can’t seem to hire/build/ship fast enough (you are struggling to keep up with customer demand), and iii. new customers are finding you organically and/or through referrals from existing customers Point (ii) is what really stood out to me personally. This is also the point where you may likely need additional capital to hire and meet customer demand — making it a great time to go fundraising at favorable terms during your potential “hockey stick” turning point. Again, this definition would depend from company to company, business model to business model. Right after launching, it’s worth spending time thinking about what it would mean for your startup to attain PMF — that is the point you’d strive to get to from then on. IV. Value of your time as an entrepreneur One of the best pieces of advice I got before cofounding Affine was from a friend who founded a digital health startup a few years ago — to do as much work as possible upfront as I’d have no time once I “officially start”. I didn’t fully appreciate that advice until after I “officially started” my own entrepreneurial journey. Think of everything on your plate as a founder: Forming your team, building your product, finding early customers (i.e. persistently following up with 1000s of potential customer leads just to get initial feedback and potentially a pilot), creating content, fundraising, strategizing, day-to-day project management — and all of these are just the basic requirements to launch something. And not to forget family time and personal time to exercise, eat and sleep. Do you really have time to attend that flashy startup conference? What will you really get out of it? Do you have the 4 hours (+ the recovery time) for that happy hour? Is it worth spending countless hours chasing investors before you have initial customer interest? Would it make sense for you to spend X hours on design / social media posts at this stage of your project? While only you can answer these questions and figure out your own priorities, consciously monitoring your time (and your team’s) at the early stages and appropriately allocating time could directly mean a much higher chance of success — with more time allocated to building your product and listening to customers instead of doing other pointless activities. One of the YC speakers highlighted that a good way to think about whether something is worth spending time on is by assigning a dollar value to your time. You’d assign an annual value to your time, and then break it down to your “hourly rate”. This is not your market earning rate — . For example, if your newly launched startup has 3 cofounders, and you expect your startup to be valued at $6m by the end of the year, each of the cofounders is adding $2m in annual value to the company. If you expect to work 100 hours per week for 52 weeks per year on your startup, you’d be working a total of 5,200 hours this year, and your hourly rate would be $400 ($2m / 5200; rounded up). this is the value you are adding to your startup So, if you want to attend TechCrunch Disrupt for 2 days for 6 hours/day, that would cost you 12 hours or $4,800 in time — which is in addition to the conference tickets and other direct expenses. V. Tracking weekly growth for one main performance metric We had to report our weekly growth metrics to the YC team; the growth of all startups in our team was also discussed on our weekly group office hours. YC has always placed heavy weight on tracking and improving weekly growth rates. The best metric to track would be net revenue — it’s the direct measure or your growth and performance. However, since many early stage startups are pre-revenue or don’t have significant revenue, they picked other relevant metrics such as number of users, weeks to launch (not a great metric!) etc. Startups can and often do change their core metrics regularly as they grow. We picked “booked revenue” to track our weekly growth — with a definition that was applicable to our business model. It was very humbling to see real growth rates typed out and discussed on a weekly basis — and really gave us a new sense of focus. . While I have read and heard arguments against this tracking methodology, living through it for 10 weeks during the program convinced us on the effectiveness and importance of it. There are numerous theories and concepts on tracking metrics / measuring what matters (OKRs) and we will likely dive into those if/when appropriate — for now, the simple practice of establishing and tracking one metric worked well for us, and is a great habit we took away from YC SS. After all the noise was stripped away, optimizing that single metric is all that mattered “A good growth rate during YC is 5–7% a week. If you can hit 10% a week you’re doing exceptionally well. If you can only manage 1%, it’s a sign you haven’t yet figured out what you’re doing.” — Paul Graham, Y Combinator Cofounder VI. Not all startups are venture backable, and not all will be / want to be unicorns Another thing I’d chalk up to Silicon Valley insanity is only considering “unicorn” ideas and disregarding everything else. Founders are generally sold on chasing investors early on in today’s environment, which may not often be in the best interest. You can make something people want, and still not be venture backable — if your market isn’t big enough, if your market isn’t growing fast enough, if you don’t have sufficient defensibility — you can still build a great business, but chasing investors may be a waste of time in that case. It is perfectly OK to build a “non-venture backable” business — you should worry about your customers and making something people want, not about being a VC target. This was surprising advice from a startup accelerator that is the top hunting ground for Silicon Valley funds. Exploring all sources of capital is crucial — even if you fall under the VC target market. VCs are in the business of investing, and hence incentivized on promoting the idea of venture funding to founders. While capital is a great tool to have to beat out your competition, you must determine if your company really needs that capital, what sources work best for you, and what partners (investors) work best for you. Fundraising too much too fast has led to the downfall of many companies, and while it may seem a “good problem to have”, your time is truly better spent building your company than chasing investors if you don’t need to. The good investors realize this too and are generally quick to commit when they are interested, and work in the best interest of founders and the companies. At a very high level, some questions to consider when you are determining if you are “VC backable”: - Is your target market large enough? (This must be a bottom-up number i.e. price of your product * total number of potential buyers). Your valuation will depend on your business model, among other things. If you are (a) a SaaS business, you may only need to have $150–200m in ARR to reach a $1bn valuation, but if you (b) sell one-time products, you may need $1bn in sales to reach a $1bn valuation (assuming growth and other factors are also favorable). Calculating backwards, if you estimate capturing 1% of your target market at exit, for (a) you’d need a target market of $15–20bn, but for (b) you’d need a target market of $100bn. - Is your target market growing meaningfully year over year? - What are the competitive dynamics in your target market? - What is your defensibility? Do you have significant IP or differentiation? VII. Prioritizing self-care to win in the long-term One of the best sessions of the program focused on self-care for founders. You can’t build a company if you are not mentally and physically in good shape. Establishing basic routines for sleeping, exercising and taking time off, along with good dietary habits, can go a long way in keeping your spirits up and maintaining your balance during the frequent lows during the entrepreneurial journey. While this concept may feel like common sense, . founders often fail to prioritize self-care, thereby doing a disservice to not only themselves but also their team and all their company’s stakeholders Aptly titled “How to Win”, the session by Daniel Gross was cited as the best session of the entire program by many participants (if I had to recommend watching just one YC SS video, I’d recommend this one): There were numerous other great takeaways on hiring, product design and more — but the above seven were the most meaningful for my team and me. You can watch all the 2018 Startup School session videos here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzVbFeiEbds&list=PLQ-uHSnFig5NVnJ_cLWM7dLuMQRDeekoX The next YC Startup School program will be held in July — you can join their waitlist here: https://www.startupschool.org

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