If you fund as many companies as we do it's unavoidable you'll end up with some overlap. Even if you tried not to accept competing companies, you'd still get overlap because startups' ideas morph so much. The way we deal with it is that when two startups are working on related stuff, we don't talk to one about what the other's doing. In practice it has not turned out to be a problem, because most big markets have room for several slightly different solutions, and it's unlikely that two startups would do precisely the same thing.
Strange as it may sound, the better your application was, the less likely there is to be an answer to this question. So don't take it personally. The fact is, even the best investors are quite bad at picking winners. VC firms consider themselves to be doing well if 4 out of 10 companies they fund succeed.
We can't know because they're still in flux. The dates we do know we put here. We've funded a lot of startups like that. In fact, we especially like them. We can probably help any startup that hasn't already raised a series A round from VCs.
Half maybe more of the startups we fund don't need the money. And in fact the money is only a small part of what YC does. The money we invest works more like financial aid in college: it ensures that the people who do need money can cover their living expenses while YC is happening. We'll still fund you, but instead of trying to build something launchable in three months, the goal becomes to build an impressive proof of concept to take to later stage investors to raise more money.
No, we'll consider startups in any field. We've funded companies that make everything from microbes to fusion reactors to coffee carts. See our requests for startups to see some of the fields we're particularly interested in, and pages specifically for ai , hardware , biotech , and edtech companies. We regularly accept solo founders. That said, our advice remains that one-person startups are tough and you're more likely to succeed with a cofounder.
If you're looking for a co-founder, check out our co-founder matching platform. It's important for the founding team to have the skills to build their product themselves, rather than outsourcing it to someone else. For most businesses, that usually means you need a technical co-founder.
We wrote about some here. In a typical YC batch, about the half companies applied multiple times before being accepted. If you've applied before and not gotten in, we strongly encourage you to apply again. Having made progress since your last application is a strong signal to us. One of YC's core principles is considering all applications equally.
We don't rely on introductions the way many investors do. We've had many companies join YC after doing another accelerator. However, if you've done another accelerator already, we may expect that you've reached a higher level of progress.
Early decision allows you to apply to the batch after this one. For example, you can apply for the summer batch alongside those applying for the winter batch. This was designed for students who would like to apply but need to finish school before doing the program. We offer early decision for both the winter and summer batches, and you just need to specify it somewhere on the application. If your company is already incorporated somewhere other than the United States, Canada, Singapore or the Cayman Islands, in order to participate in YC you will need to create a parent company that is in one of those jurisdictions.
The existing company will then become a subsidiary of the new United States, Canada, Singapore or Cayman parent company. While lawyers will drive this process, it will require a significant effort on your part. The next one that we try to figure out is, what is your connection to the problem?
Like, what is going on? Why do you care about this customer, about this problem? And if we go a step deeper, are you going to care about this problem for the next one year or the next five years or the next 10 years? Because the startup journey takes a long time. We can build. We want to drive, get the first 10 customers. And to be honest, we default positive.
How do you square that with how often Y Combinator companies pivot inside the bootcamp? You got an idea. How do you square all of that? We aspire to hit all of those points that I mentioned. Maybe a B, maybe a B minus. I was co-founder of Justin. We pivoted to Twitch, it worked out. Sometimes in the process of working on your startup, you learn something. And I think pivot is being used in extremely aggressive ways nowadays.
Vox Media has a whole podcast called Pivot. There you go. Which allows us to give founders the benefit of the doubt. I mean, Justin. There has been a very long, contentious debate about diversity in tech — in the Valley specifically, but broadly in tech. Someone from a technical background who can communicate to another group of founders clearly.
Who can devote nights and weekends to getting something built to show that they have started solving their problem, that has a network or a set of relationships with other people devoted to the same problem. You can see how that narrows the funnel. Can you have a relationship with your co-founders before you start the company? Can you recruit a technical co-founder or learn how to code yourself?
Can you make progress on your product? So none of these things, I think, are barriers. They know the challenge is hard. And what they want to be given is accurate information about how to accomplish the challenge. One is information. For the longest time, the information about how to access this world was only distributed vocally. You had to know someone. YC spends a ridiculous amount of time publishing information about the startup world.
And to further that, we created a program called Startup School, which is a free online MOOC that hundreds of thousands of startup founders have participated in, that distributes all of the information about how to get started with a startup.
With YC, we not only have to fund companies. But we have to make sure that they raise money on Demo Day. And then the fourth, of course, is community. So YC is kind of structured to try to help outsiders become insiders. And, you know, to be honest, a disproportionate number of underrepresented founders are outsiders.
Now in terms of the challenges, one of our YC partners, Dalton Caldwell, he often refers to this idea that a lot of times people look for silver bullets, one silver bullet. When they should be looking for 12 lead bullets.
So in the last six years, YC has funded about Black founders, about over Latinx founders. And close to female founders. Get specific. What are some of these problems? When I talk to people who have the technical skills, who are interested in software, who are interested in startups, socio-economic barriers are really tricky.
And I am part of the safety net of my extended family — when people need money, they come to me. Do I have the same freedom to do a startup as somebody who grew up, went to the same school, has the same level of education, and same interest, but whose parents were doctors and lawyers? I was talking to a woman who was working at Apple as an engineer, and absolutely murdering it.
How do we solve those problems? You know, part of the solution is making sure that I can tell them, if you get into YC and you do well, I guarantee you, you will be able to raise money.
Well, that creates a barrier. And to some extent, I have to help founders overcome those. If you want to remove risk from a choice like that, the simplest way to do it is to just throw more cash at that problem. You can always get that job at Facebook. So I was talking to some college kids a couple years ago. You know what they told me? I should definitely work at Facebook for a couple years just I gotta tell the founder the truth; most startups fail.
Almost all startups fail. So the chances of Apple failing, basically nil. The chances of your startup succeeding, closer to nil.
These are smart people who should make the choices that are better for their lives and their families. I have a family member with health problems. Everyone should have their freedom to choose the right choice for them. I should make sure that they understand this choice. I should make sure that this choice is well-documented and they can access it.
We gotta do that. Y Combinator did go fully remote. The whole program was remote. Are you going to go back to in-person?
Or are you going to keep it fully remote? I was shocked at how well remote worked. And I was shocked at how it forced YC to get better. And I was shocked at how it made YC more accessible to founders around the world. I was nervous. I went through YC in person twice. And I was nervous. And that was a great process. They can talk in the hallways. Some idea that you were never going to have happens because of serendipity in the office. Then I look on the flip side. I look at our own staff meeting, which is now in Zoom.
So the meeting has become more participatory. I have no idea how to re-create that in person. How do you bridge those things together? Figure out how to park. Get in through security signing, dah, dah, dah. And inevitably we were running a couple of minutes late, so wait around. Talk for half an hour, and then reverse that whole thing. So to get a half hour of advice, they probably had to invest about two hours. Sometimes longer. In the remote program, half an hour of advice takes half an hour.
So YC partners did 50 percent more office hours with companies. Not impossible, but harder. We had events down in Mountain View. The set of speakers that I can bring to Mountain View is entirely different than the set of speakers that I can bring on Zoom. If I want to give you the most diverse set of speakers that can help you the best, I gotta do that on Zoom.
But there should be events where you can actually see alumni who are further ahead than you and start building a relationship with them in person. So I have to provide that kind of product too. What parts of it work better online? YC programming historically has been one night a week. One night a week for three months. Different combinations of markets, products, and founders all need a different type of financing. Some could use a business loan. Others a r evenue-based financing agreement.
And some need venture capital. Yet when YC makes an offer, they force a company to decide right then and there what type of company it is, and how it will be financed. As many of my readers know, venture capital is a hits business.
In VC, the winners cover the losses in a portfolio. And this creates conflict in the incentives between founders and VCs. Very few businesses were built for venture capital, but the market has forgotten this on both sides. And we see the logos. We see the names. YC is giving these founders hope and confidence by picking them, seemingly feeling them like a needle out of a haystack. YC is giving them a chance at changing the world; To solve a problem near and dear to their heart.
Who in their right mind would say no to this? This is what makes the YC deal so damn appealing. The issue is that nobody is going to tell them what they are signing up for when they sign that SAFE and take YCs money. Now the companies need to have a billion-dollar exit to matter to VCs.
So these little decisions that a founder made at the ideation stage of Y Combinator actually have a massive impact on the future. Optionality goes completely out the window. But who failed here? Did the founders fail? I think the system failed the founders. I am not here saying that Y Combinator is a bad organization. They do a lot of good for the world and create tons of value for the founders that strike it big. But what I am saying is that by taking investment at these terms, unless the startups plan on bootstrapping the rest of the way or failing, they are completely obliterating any chance these founders have at building the type of company they may want to build in the future.
They are submitting themselves to build the type of company that the Bay Area needs them to build so everyone can keep their jobs. Y Combinator needs ambitious founders like us to shoot for the moon. They need big thinkers, problem solvers, and missionaries.
VCs need people to solve big problems by building and scaling billion-dollar companies.
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