YC Group Partner Brad Flora has seen startup fundraising from every angle: as a founder, as one of the most prolific angel investors in Silicon Valley, and now as a YC Group Partner. Brad has coached hundreds of companies on fundraising. In this talk, he shares stories and advice on how modern startup fundraising works.

Paul Graham Fundraising Essays:
http://www.paulgraham.com/fundraising.html
http://www.paulgraham.com/startupfunding.html
http://www.paulgraham.com/convince.html
http://www.paulgraham.com/herd.html

Geoff Ralston's Fundraising Guides:
https://www.ycombinator.com/li....brary/4A-a-guide-to-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcevHkNGrWQ&ab_channel=YCombinator

YC Fundraising Resources:
https://www.ycombinator.com/li....brary/2u-how-to-buil
https://www.ycombinator.com/li....brary/6q-how-to-pitc
https://www.ycombinator.com/li....brary/71-how-to-get-
https://www.ycombinator.com/li....brary/4O-raising-mon
https://www.ycombinator.com/li....brary/3u-different-t

Apply to Y Combinator: https://yc.link/SUS-apply
Work at a startup: https://yc.link/SUS-jobs

Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) -
00:00 - Intro
00:27 - Fundraising resources
02:13 - 7 fundraising myths
04:06 - Raising money is glamorous
06:51 - The need to raise money before starting a startup
10:10 - My startup need to be impressive to raise money
13:56 - Raising money is complicated, slow, and expensive.
18:04 - I am going to lose control of my company
21:58 - I need a fancy network to raise money
23:43 - If investors reject my startup its a bad startup
26:35 - Wrap up - This isn't for you

A fireside with Sam Altman on June 16, 2025 at AI Startup School in San Francisco.

Sam Altman grew up obsessed with technology, broke into the Stanford mainframe as a kid, and dropped out to start his first company before turning 20.

In this conversation, he traces the path from early startup struggles to building OpenAI—sharing what he’s learned about ambition, the weight of responsibility, and how to keep building when the whole world is watching. He opens up about the hardest moments of his career, the limits of personal productivity, and why, in the end, it's all still about finding people you like working with and doing something that matters.

Apply to Y Combinator: https://ycombinator.com/apply
Work at a startup: https://workatastartup.com

Chapters:
00:00 – We’re going for AGI
01:25 – Founding OpenAI Against the Odds
05:00 – GPT-4o & the Future of Reasoning Models
07:00 – ChatGPT Memory & the ‘Her’ Vision
10:00 – GPT-5 & the Vision of a Multimodal Supermodel
11:00 – Robots at Scale
15:00 – Don’t Build ChatGPT — Build What’s Missing
17:00 – Elon’s Harsh Email & Building Conviction
26:00 – One Person’s Leverage in the Next Decade
32:00 – AI for Science: Sam’s Personal Bet

YC Group Partner Dalton Caldwell shares his strategies for how to think about applying to YC. This talk goes beyond the information on YC's website, and reflects Dalton's latest advice on the topic. (Fun Fact: An earlier version of this talk is frequently mentioned by YC founders as instrumental in their decision to apply to YC and to getting in!)

Apply to Y Combinator: https://yc.link/SUS-apply
Work at a startup: https://yc.link/SUS-jobs

Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) -
00:00 - Intro
00:17 - Why It's Worth Applying to YC
01:11 - Creating Luck
02:16 - Weird Reasons Not to Apply to YC
02:27 - I Am Too Early
03:36 - Being a YC founder is different than watching YC YouTube videos
04:42 - How to Stop Being Discouraged From Applying to YC
06:21 - Other Reasons Why People Don't Apply to YC
07:16 - Don't Overthink
09:05 - YC's Application Tips
10:37 - YC Application Reviewing: The Basics
15:59 - What Are Your Odds of Getting an Interview at YC?
18:12 - How to Prepare for Your YC Interview
22:22 - What Makes a Successful Interview at YC?
23:38 - Post Interview Feedback
24:38 - Outro

Kat Mañalac is the head of YC's Outreach team and advises early stage founders on their launches during the YC batch. She shares the multitude of ways to launch a product and how to get attention for them. Her talk provides tangible strategies and examples of startup launches and will change the way you think about launching.

Apply to Y Combinator: https://yc.link/SUS-apply
Work at a startup: https://yc.link/SUS-jobs

Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) -
00:00 - Launching Your Startup
01:28 - When Should I Launch My Startup?
03:42 - One Sentence Pitch
05:19 - How to Create a Short Memorable Description
09:17 - When is the X for Y Construction Not Too Cliche?
12:05 - Types of Launches
20:43 - Summary

At the start of the S23 batch we interviewed 50 founders about how they managed to get their very first customers. It's a snapshot in time that highlights the different tactics YC founders employ in the early stages to get their companies up and running. Hopefully their experience will offer some insights for anyone wondering about how exactly to go after that first customer.

Thank you to all the companies who volunteered to be interviewed for this episode: Artie, CandorIQ, Accend, Mantlebio, Fleet Works, Sweetspot, Shasta Health, Kapa, Ohmic Biosciences, Kino AI, Osium AI, Gleam, Paylane, Fortuna Health, Roame, Mano AI, Certainly Health, Strada, Envelope Money, Greenlite, Spine AI, RightPage, Movley, Octo, Craftwork, Letter AI, Flair Health, Helios

Apply to Y Combinator: https://yc.link/FounderFAQ-apply
Work at a Startup: https://yc.link/FounderFAQ-jobs

Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) -
00:00 - Intro: How did you find your first customer?
00:20 - Sweetspot
00:31 - Shasta Health
00:45 - Kapa.ai
01:01 - Platform we got our first customer?
01:15 - Envelope Money
01:36 - Reworkd AI
01:53 - Greenlite
02:12 - Ohmic Biosciences
02:23 - Kino AI
02:34 - MantleBio
02:49 - Accend
02:57 - Craftwork
03:11 - Helios
03:25 - Letter AI
03:52 - Outro

Michael Truell on June 17th, 2025 at AI Startup School in San Francisco.

At 24, Michael Truell has already built Cursor into one of the fastest-growing companies in AI coding, hitting $100M ARR in just a year.

In this fireside chat with YC General Partner Diana Hu, he shares the lessons that came from years of failed projects with his co-founders, why he believes programming is still essential even as AI changes how we code, and how Cursor is taking on GitHub Copilot with the conviction that all of software development will flow through models.

Chapters:
00:38 – PG essays & first code
02:36 – Games, robots, and hacking ML as a teenager
06:54 – From Hemisphere to Cursor: first startup attempts
09:54 – Pivoting hard when nothing was working
12:04 – Taking on GitHub Copilot
13:10 – Shipping the first Cursor editor
15:24 – Early lessons: features, feedback, and VS Code shift
16:26 – Codex, custom models, and pragmatic bets
17:58 – Wandering in 2023
20:00 – Breakthrough: $1M → $100M in a year
22:46 – Word of mouth and wildfire growth
25:24 – The future of coding and advice for students

Spot publicitaire pour promouvoir le travail de Nzokolab

www.nzokolab.cg

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