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

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

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

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 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

It’s fair to say that few people in tech are positioned to have a bigger impact on the future than Sam Altman. As the CEO of OpenAI, Altman and his team have overseen monumental leaps forward in machine learning, generative AI and most recently LLMs that can reason at PhD levels. And this is just the beginning. In his latest essay Altman predicted that ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence) is just a few thousand days away. So how did we get to this point? In this episode of our rebooted series "How To Build The Future," YC President and CEO Garry Tan sits down with Altman to talk about the origins of OpenAI, what’s next for the company, and what advice he has for founders navigating this massive platform shift.

Apply to Y Combinator: https://ycombinator.com/apply

Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) -
0:00 Coming up
0:43 Intro: Is this the best time to start a tech company?
6:27 How Sam got into YC
10:53 The early days of YC Research
12:49 Getting the first OpenAI team together
17:13 Why scaling was considered heretical
21:42 Conviction can be powerful
26:15 Commercializing GPT-4
28:53 What drew Sam to create Loopt
30:24 Learning from platform shifts
33:15 Tech incumbents are unaware of what is happening with AI
34:08 Sam's recommended startup path
36:56 Reflecting on the OpenAI drama
39:58 What startups are building with current models
44:16 Outro: Advice for early founders + final thoughts

Navigating B2B sales for the first time can feel slow and overwhelming.

Drawing from his experience founding Monzo and GoCardless, YC's Tom Blomfield shares his playbook for running a tight sales process that lands real, recurring revenue. He walks through each step—free and paid pilots, opt-out contracts, long-term deals—and shows how to prove value and close customers.

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

Chapters:
00:21 - The Typical B2B Sales Progression
01:00 - Common Pitfalls in Early Stages
01:38 - Understanding Design Partnerships
02:56 - Identifying Customer Problems
04:18 - Avoiding Overbuilding
06:11 - Transitioning to Free Trials
07:11 - Defining Success Metrics
08:38 - Overcoming Customer Objections
10:01 - Moving to Paid Trials
10:20 - Securing Financial Commitments
11:30 - Optimizing Pilot Engagement
13:47 - Recurring Revenue Contracts
15:33 - Focusing on Customer Success

Based on the thousands of companies YC has funded over the years, the biggest common element between all successful startups is having technical talent on the founding team. But what do you do if you don't know how to code? You may think you can get by using no-code tools, part-time consultants, or dev shops to bring your startup idea to life. But that thinking is wrong.

In this episode of Dalton & Michael, we’ll discuss exactly why that is and why recruiting a technical co-founder is the single biggest way to create value as someone trying to start the next big thing.

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

Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) -
00:00 - Coming Up
00:32 - Technical Founders
01:52 - The Intersection
05:06 - Software Engineers
09:18 - How to Find Them
10:31 - Ask The Best
11:28 - How Not to Pitch
13:26 - The Adventure
14:17 - Great Recruiters

One trait that many great founders share is conviction. In this episode of Dalton & Michael, we’ll talk about finding confidence in what you're building, the dangers of inaccurate assumptions, and a question founders need to ask themselves before they start trying to sell to anyone else.

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

Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) -
00:00 - Coming Up
00:16 - Intro: How Fast Is Too Fast?
00:26 - Rigorous Thinking
02:10 - Superficial Validation
03:26 - Solving Problems
04:09 - High Quality Reps
05:52 - Best Qualities
06:57 - Conviction
08:26 - Fear
12:52 - YC Standard Deal
13:33 - "Pivotitis"
14:01 - Random Walk
16:11 - A Useless MVP
19:40 - Learn A Good Rep

How to START a STARTUP with Michael Seibel (Reddit, YC, Twitch)

Interested in starting a startup? In this video, YC's Michael Seibel shares valuable insights on how to start a successful business from scratch.

Welcome to our channel! In this video, Michael Seibel, CEO of Y Combinator, provides a comprehensive guide on how to start a startup in just 15 minutes. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or already in the startup world, this video is packed with invaluable advice and insights.

Michael covers:
1. The importance of having a technical co-founder.
2. How to brainstorm and validate your startup idea.
3. Key steps to building an MVP (Minimum Viable Product).
4. Strategies for achieving growth and gaining traction.
5. Tips for fundraising and dealing with investors.
6. Essential operations and hiring practices.
7. Don't miss out on this quick yet powerful session to jumpstart your entrepreneurial journey!

Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
00:12 - Requirements to Start a Tech Startup
01:08 - Ideas and Problems to Solve
02:12 - Launching the MVP
03:12 - Achieving Growth
04:24 - Doing PR Yourself
05:20 - Fundraising Tips
06:00 - Controlling Operations and Costs
07:04 - Hiring the Right People
08:24 - Conclusion

In this episode of Founder Firesides, YC General Partner Gustaf Alströmer is joined by Max Junestrand, co-founder and CEO of Legora, one of the fastest-growing legal AI startups in the world.

In just 13 months, Max and his team scaled from 10 to 100 people, raised $80M, and cracked the challenge of selling to one of the most skeptical industries. Today, Legora’s AI workspace is used by tens of thousands of lawyers, including top law firms like Goodwin and Cleary Gottlieb.

Max shares insights on building a successful vertical AI company, selling to conservative markets, and sheds light on what the future of legal tech looks like.

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

Chapters:
00:45 – Legora's Origin Story
01:00 – Building an AI Workspace for Lawyers
02:20 – The GPT Unlock
04:10 – The “Aha Moment” with Law Firms
06:15 – Raising $80M and Scaling Fast
06:30 – How Legora Works
09:40 – How It Transforms Legal Work
11:40 – Selling To AI Skeptics
14:40 – Creative Use Cases: From Court Battles to NDAs
17:30 – Starting Without Industry Expertise
18:40 – Interviewing 100 Lawyers
20:30 – Competing with Legacy Legal Tech Giants
23:50 – Tech Stack and Model Strategy
25:00 – Who Actually Buys AI inside a Law Firm?
27:00 – Cracking Sales in Conservative Industries
28:00 – Max’s Background: From eSports to Startups
30:50 – Hypergrowth: 10 → 100 People in 13 Months
34:00 – Why Hiring Ex-Founders Works
36:45 – The Future Job of a Lawyer
38:35 – What PMF Felt Like
39:45 – Why They Stayed in Stockholm (Not SF)
41:00 – Becoming the Category Leader in Legal AI
42:00 – Advice for Founders Building Vertical AI Companies
43:20 – What It’s Like to Work at Legora

Many startups fail because they run out of money. So how should you think about how to spend the money you raise? In this episode of Office Hours, YC General Partners Brad Flora, Pete Koomen, Nicolas Dessaigne, and Gustaf Alströmer discuss how to spend responsibly at each stage of a startup— including advice on when to hire, whether to invest in marketing and what spending mistakes to avoid.

Apply to Y Combinator: https://ycombinator.com/apply

Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) -
00:00 - Intro
01:40 - How to think about money
02:42 - Funding
03:00 - Hiring
07:00 - Spending
10:45 - Speed
13:00 - Mistakes
16:04 - Waste of money
19:34 - Missed opportunity
23:44 - Runway
26:38 - Being honest
28:40 - Outro

Y Combinator CEO and Partner Michael Seibel on the biggest mistakes first-time founders make.

https://twitter.com/mwseibel

Y Combinator invests a small amount of money ($150k) in a large number of startups (recently 200), twice a year.

Learn more about YC and apply for funding here: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/

***

Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) -
00:00 - Introduction
00:10 - Solving a problem you don't care about
01:01 - Helping users you don't care about
01:47 - Choosing co-founders you don't know well
02:22 - Not having transparent conversations with your co-founders
03:20 - Not launching
04:45 - Not using analytics
05:02 - Not knowing where your first users will come from
05:47 - Poor prioritization

AI has upended the once "safe" CS career path. New grads are facing unemployment rates twice those of art history majors, and a CS degree is no longer a surefire ticket to wealth. At the same time, small, focused teams are scaling from zero to eight-figure revenue in months.

In a special Lightcone Live at AI Startup School, Garry, Harj, Diana, and Jared discuss why it's now more important than ever to focus on building real skills, domain expertise, and agency rather than just chasing credentials.

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

Chapters:
04:18 - The Inverted Career Risk Paradigm
05:16 - AI's Impact on Education and Skills
07:08 - Agency vs. Credential Maxing
08:28 - Motivation: Fear or Excitement
09:43 - The Accelerated Growth of AI Startups
10:50 - Real Success over Fake Credentials
12:55 - Domain Expertise and Technical Expertise
15:05 - Gaining Domain Expertise as a Student
18:51 - Breaking the Student Mindset
20:39 - The Dangers of Entrepreneurship Programs
22:52 - Social Media Strategy for Startups
27:30 - The College Dropout Question
32:33 - When to Quit Your Job

You might think that pivoting is something done only by the startups that don’t make it. In reality, a huge number of the best startups pivoted.

In this first episode of our new series, Office Hours, Y Combinator Group Partners share their favorite stories of entrepreneurs who pivoted and went on to build game-changing companies. The group of startup experts also share their own pivot stories and help answer the questions: How do you know if it’s time for your startup to pivot—and how will you know if that next idea is the one?

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

Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) -
00:00 - Intro: How To Pivot
00:37 - Favorite Pivots
00:53 - Brex
02:40 - Goat
04:55 - Tom Blomfield: Billion Dollar Startup
07:52 - Clipboard Health
08:49 - The Secret to Finding the Right Problem
10:28 - Pivot Hell
13:43 - Diana Hu's Startup
16:23 - Picking The Right Metrics To Follow
16:47 - Favorite Understanding Of Pivoting
18:34 - Find And Track Your Main KPI
20:02 - Outro: Pivoting Process

Elon is the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors. Originally a cofounder of Paypal, Elon Musk founded SpaceX to enable the colonization of Mars.

Access podcast and transcript versions of this interview here: https://www.ycombinator.com/future/elon/

Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) -
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:22 If you were 22 today, what would the five problems that you would think about working on? 💡
00:01:01 - AI 🤖
00:01:50 - Genetics 🧬
00:02:16 - High bandwidth interface to the brain 🧠
00:02:55 Common questions - I want to be the next Elon Musk, how do I do that?
00:03:08 What did you do when you were younger that set you up to have a big impact?
00:05:00 Do you think people that want to be useful today should get PhDs? 🎓
00:05:10 How should someone figure out how they can be most useful?
00:05:49 SpaceX decision 🚀 - Estimating the probability of success of this very crazy idea at the time
00:08:16 Making a decision when everyone tells you this is a crazy idea? Where do you get the internal strength? 💪
00:08:57 - Just feel it and let the importance of it drive you to do it anyway
00:09:43 What are the odds of the Mars colony are at this point? When can we go to Mars? ♂⚓
00:11:13 What does the positive future for AI looks like and how can we get there? 🤖🔮
00:13:23 - Humans are so slow 😂
00:15:02 How do you think OpenAI is going as a six-month-old company? ⚛️
00:16:03 How do you spend your days now? What do you allocate most of your time to? 🕒
00:16:30 What do you do when you are at SpaceX or Tesla? 🤔
00:16:56 Elon spends most of his time with engineering team 😲
00:18:18 About Tesla Gigafactory and speed of the production line 🏭

There's only so many hours in a day and running a startup will require most of them. So how do you use that time wisely and be more productive?

In this episode of Office Hours, the Group Partners at Y Combinator share their favorite strategies to be more effective and reduce distractions at work. They'll discuss the benefits of maker/manager schedules in addition to the fake work and productivity fads that can do more harm than good. If you're going to build a big business, you'll learn it requires working smarter AND harder to win.

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

Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) -
00:00 - Coming Up
00:48 - Tip 1: Focus on your customers
01:19 - Tip 2: Avoid shiny objects and focus on the core mission
02:26 - Tip 3: Write down and track your KPIs
04:48 - Tip 4: Avoid productivity fads
06:07 - Tip 5: Real work vs. fake work
08:23 - Tip 6: Divide your day up into two parts: Meetings and creative work
09:03 - Tip 7: Be intentional about time spend on social media
09:56 - Tip 8: Use social media to build relationships with customers
11:06 - Tip 9: Stack rank your priorities
12:59 - Tip 10: Identify what is NOT a priority
14:39 - Tip 11: Avoid multitasking
15:13 - Tip 12: Productivity tools doesn't substitute work
15:47 - Outro

AI can't yet one-shot an entire product—but with the rise of vibe coding, it's getting close.

YC's Tom Blomfield has spent the last month building side projects with tools like Claude Code, Windsurf, and Aqua, seeing just how far you can push modern LLMs. From writing full-stack apps to debugging with a single paste of an error message, AI is becoming a legit collaborator in the dev process. This video is a playbook for anyone who wants to get the most out of vibe coding and build faster.

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

Chapters (Powered by https://chapterme.co/) -
0:00 Intro
0:54 Some vibe coding tips from YC X25 founders
4:12 First, pick your tools and make a plan
6:27 Use version control
7:23 Write tests
8:14 Remember, LLM's aren't just for coding
8:57 Bug fixes
11:10 Documentation
12:03 Functionality
13:20 Choose the correct stack
15:08 Refactor frequently
15:40 Keep experimenting!
16:21 Outro

Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator, shares his thoughts on how you can succeed with a startup. Startup School is YC's free online program for founders. Sign up to access the full curriculum and over $100k in deals! https://www.startupschool.org/

Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) -
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:11 A product so good people tell friends
00:00:53 Easy to understand
00:01:13 Exponential growth in market
00:02:00 Real trends vs Fake trends
00:03:30 Evangelical founder
00:04:04 Ambitious vision
00:04:22 Hard startup vs Easy Startup
00:05:34 Confident and definite view of future (but flexible!)
00:06:10 Huge if it works
00:06:30 Team (non-obvious insights)
00:07:20 - Optimists!
00:07:47 - Idea generators
00:08:16 - ‘We’ll figure it out’
00:08:50 - ‘I’ve got it’
00:09:08 - Action bias
00:09:34 - The blessing or inexperience
00:10:16 Momentum
00:11:04 Competitive advantage
00:11:46 Sensible business model
00:12:04 Distribution strategy
00:12:20 Traits of best founders - Frugality, focus, obsession, love
00:12:46 Why startups win
00:13:13 - One no vs One yes
00:14:06 - Fast-changing markets
00:14:43 - Platform shifts
00:15:46 End

YC Group Partner Jared Friedman shares a framework for how to get and evaluate startup ideas. He shares many examples of YC companies and the inside stories of how they came up with the ideas that turned into billion dollar companies. Even if you have an existing idea, this talk helps founders confirm that their idea is good and/or provide framework for a future pivot.

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 - Finding a promising idea
00:51 - Where does this advice come from?
01:44 - 4 most common mistakes
06:29 - 10 key questions to ask about any startup idea
14:40 - 3 things that make your startup idea good
19:42 - How to come up with startup ideas
21:25 - 7 recipes for generating startups ideas

#startup #tech #entrepreneur