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Here’s my personal experience getting into Y Combinator and what I think you should do if you want to get in. BIG DISCLAIMER: I am not an expert, I don’t work for YC and haven’t been in one of the new, remote-only batches. YC is constantly evolving and improving their process for finding great companies, so I encourage you to get multiple opinions here and try and find advice directly from YC partners themselves. That being said, here’s what’s worked for me, and what I think is generally true about the YC application and interview process.

ABOUT Y COMBINATOR:
Y Combinator (YC) is an American seed investment startup accelerator launched in March 2005. It has been used to launch over 2,000 companies, including Stripe, Airbnb, Cruise Automation, DoorDash, Coinbase, Instacart, Dropbox, Twitch, and Reddit. The combined valuation of the top YC companies was over $300 billion as of January 2021. The company's accelerator program is held in Mountain View, California.

Y Combinator was founded in 2005 by Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston, Trevor Blackwell, and Robert Tappan Morris.

From 2005 to 2008, one program was held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and one was held in Mountain View, California. As Y Combinator grew to 40 investments per year, running two programs became too much. In January 2009, Y Combinator announced that the Cambridge program would be closed and all future programs would take place in Silicon Valley.

In 2009, Sequoia Capital led the $2 million investment round into an entity of Y Combinator to enable them to invest in approximately 60 companies a year. The following year, Sequoia led an $8.25 million funding round for Y Combinator to further increase the number of startups the company could fund.

Then, in 2011, Yuri Milner and SV Angel offered every Y Combinator company a $150,000 convertible note investment. The amount put into each company was changed to $80,000 when Start Fund was renewed.

In September 2013, Paul Graham announced Y Combinator would fund nonprofit organizations that were accepted into the program after having tested the concept with Watsi (while continuing to fund mostly for-profit startups).

In 2014, founder Paul Graham announced he was stepping down and that Sam Altman would take over as president of Y Combinator. That same year, Altman announced "The New Deal" for YC startups, which offers $150,000 for 7% equity.

Late in 2014, Sam Altman announced a partnership with Transcriptic to provide increased support for Y Combinator's growing community of biotech companies. Then in 2015, he announced a partnership with Bolt and increased support for hardware companies.

The YC Fellowship Program was announced in July 2015, with the goal of funding companies at the idea or prototype stage. The first batch of YC Fellowship included 32 companies that received an equity-free grant instead of an investment.

In January 2016, Y Combinator announced version 2 of the Fellowship program, with participating companies receiving $20k investment for a 1.5% equity stake. The equity stake is structured as a convertible security that only converts into shares if a company has an initial public offering (IPO), or a funding event or acquisition that values the company at $100m or more. The YC Fellowship was short-lived. In September 2016, then CEO Sam Altman announced that the fellowship will be discontinued.


ABOUT JOHN COOGAN:

I am the co-founder of http://soylent.com and http://lucy.co, both of which were funded by Y Combinator (Summer 2012 and Winter 2018).

I've been an entrepreneur for nearly a decade across multiple companies. I've done a lot of work in silicon valley, so that's mostly what I talk about. I've raised over 10 rounds of venture capital totaling over $100m in total funding.

I work mostly in tech-enabled consumer packaged goods, meaning I use software to make the best products possible and then deliver them to the widest possible audience. I'm a big fan of machine learning, python programming, and motion graphics.

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CONTACT:

You can get in touch with me via Twitter:   / johncoogan  

Disclaimer: This video is purely my opinion and should not be regarded as a primary source. I am not a financial advisor and this is not a recommendation to buy or sell securities. Always do your own due diligence.