Jessica Livingston's book "Founders at work" (2007, 32 stories) inspired thousands of founders to start their startups.
I find and put in one place 150+ founders stories to inspire new wave of founders. (+pitchdecs, 1-minute videos, demo day videos, applications, and “early workplaces”). And I am finding every day more and more stories! Sometimes I think that stories find me. Today it is impossible to write and publish material book about YC founders, let it be a digital, neverending book, that writes itself.
It was an amazing journey, it changed my mindset. I rushed into unknown unknowns, where angels fear to tread... and I want to share this with everyone.
I hope, that FoundersAtWork.io saves 50-100 hours for 1000+ new founders. It is my "embarrassing MVP" I continue to work on, and I need your feedback.
Everyone can contribute founder's story!
2005
Y Combinator (S05)
- What I Worked On (text, 2021)
- Why I Do YC (text, 2008)
- The Social Radar: What I Did at Y Combinator (text, 2015)
- Grow the Puzzle Around You (text, 2018)
- How to make something people want (video, 2015)
Kiko (S05)
- How My First Startup Got Picked For Y Combinator (video, 2021)
- Shitty First Startups (video, 2015)
- I Almost Sold To Yahoo For $1,000,000 At 22 (video, 2021)
- I Sold My Startup On Ebay For $258,100 (video, 2021)
Reddit (S05)
- Our Y Combinator Summer 05 Application [what would lead to reddit]
- How Reddit's Alexis Ohanian Stays Productive--Even on Travel Days (text, 2017)
- Interview with Jessica Livingston (video, 2010)
- Alexis Ohanian has left Reddit's board in a 'long overdue' move. Here's how he launched Reddit into a $3 billion behemoth and became an outspoken activist in the tech world. (text, 2020)
2006
Wofoo (W06)
- Interview with Jessica Livingston (video, 2010)
- Wufoo Sold For $35 Mil. Here's The Story Behind Its Success. (text, video, 2011)
- How to Design Software Users Love (video, 2012)
- Interview with Kevin Hale (video, 2014)
- How to Build Products Users Love (video, 2014)
- How to solve cofounder problems? (video, 2016)
- How to Work Together (video, 2019)
- Motivating Employees Without Fear (text)
Scribd (S06)
- How Tikhon Got into Y Combinator Twice (video, 2016)
- The Challenges a Repeat Founder Faces (video, 2017)
2007
Justin.tv/Twitch (W07)
- The story of a serial entrepreneur (video, 2012)
- The Value of Terrible Ideas (video, 2014)
- Justin Kan's Story (video, 2021)
- Yale Program on Entrepreneurship (video, 2015)
- Justin Kan made $1B from Twitch by Live Streaming his Life (video, 2021)
- How Twitch Reached $1,000,000/Month in Revenue (video, 2021)
- How We Chose The Name Twitch (video, 2021)
- How we ALMOST sold Twitch to Google for $1 BILLION (video, 2021)
- Selling Twitch to Amazon...the real story (video, 2021)
- What Did I Spend My Money On After Selling Twitch and Investing (video, 2021)
- Do I regret selling Twitch? (video, 2021)
Weebly (W07)
Disqus (S07)
- Interview with Disqus - Part 1 (video, 2008)
- Interview with Disqus - Part 2: The Y Combinator Experience (video, 2008)
- Why Disqus Founder Daniel Ha Chose Name First, Idea Later (text, 2011)
- Daniel Ha Founder of Disqus (video, 2011)
- 9 lessons on the path to reaching a billion readers (text, 2014)
- How 2 Students Grew Their Startup Idea Into an 8-Figure Business (audio, 2016)
- Q&A With Disqus Founder Daniel Ha: 'We Weren't a Rocket-Like Startup' (text, 2017)
- How Commenting App Disqus Makes $20m+ Annually (audio, 2018)
Dropbox (S07)
- Interview with Jessica Livingston (video, 2010)
- Drew Houston on Being Rejected from YC (video, 2017)
- Congrats Dropbox! (text, 2018)
- On Starting and Scaling Dropbox (text, video, 2017)
- Dropbox's original YC application
2008
Snaptalent (W08)
- So, you got a Y Combinator interview, now what? (text, 2009)
Trigger (W08)
- Mental model for product management: a way to classify features (text, 2014)
Posterous (S08)
- Interview with Jessica Livingston (video, 2010)
- Design for Startups by Garry Tan (video, 2018)
- Applying to Y Combinator? 3 tips from a former YC partner (video, 2019)
- 3 Tips to Nail the Y Combinator Interview (video, 2019)
- My $200 million startup mistake: Peter Thiel asked and I said no (video, 2019)
- How I got into Y Combinator (video, 2020)
- Co-Founder Conflict & Why I Quit my Startup (video, 2021)
2009
AirBnB (W09)
- Interview with Jessica Livingston (video, 2010)
- Brian Chesky - Startup School 2010 (video)
- Airbnb's Surprising Path to Y Combinator (text, 2017)
- An Unbelievable Journey (text, 2017)
Mixpanel (S09)
- Acquiring your first 100 customers (text, 2018)
- The first 18 months of starting a company: it's life or death (text, 2018)
- Here's what I learned when I became "CEO" at 20 (text, 2018)
- Let's talk about fundraising (text, 2018)
- How to approach someone to be your mentor (text, 2018)
- Decisions, decisions. It gets harder as a company grows (text, 2018)
- Mixpanel's Y Combinator application in 2009
- This pitch deck got our startup a $865M valuation
Stripe (S09)
- Running Your Company by Patrick Collison (video, 2018)
2010
Creative Market (W10)
- The Pre-launch Strategy That Got 70,000 Users In 9 Months for Creative Market (audio, 2015)
- How To Make Your YC Application Stand Out (text, 2016)
- Advice for New Managers (text, 2016)
- Launching Creative Market: Our Playbook for Kickstarting a Marketplace (text, 2017)
- Creative Market's Core Values, and the "3 Shits" That Shape Our Culture (text, 2018)
- What Happens When You Stop Second Guessing & Trust Your Instincts (audio)
- 7 Proven Strategies for Launching an Online Marketplace (audio)
- YC SUS: Aaron Epstein and Eric Migicovsky give website feedback (video, 2020)
Seeing Interactive/OwnLocal (W10)
- How we got into Y Combinator (text, 2018)
- Read Our YC Application
- Application video
Rapportive (S10)
- Having a launched product is hard (text, 2010)
- What's so special about Y Combinator? (text, 2011)
- My FounderLY interview (video1, video2, text, 2011)
Opzi (S10)
Crowdbooster (S10)
- Y Combinator is over, now what? (text, 2010)
- Crowdbooster boosts effective social media to new levels (text, 2011)
- Privilege and inequality in Silicon Valley (text, 2016)
- Should you apply to YC? YES, but here's one reason why you shouldn't (text, 2011)
Fanvibe (S10)
- Y Combinator Experience (text, 2010)
2011
Vidyard (S11)
-
Vidyard: How a YC startup is using YouTube to sell its own video hosting solution (text, 2011)
-
How One Founder's Wedding Day Call Led To Millions In Funding From A Top VC (text, 2015)
-
May the $35M be with you, says Battery Ventures to Vidyard in Series C funding (text, 2016)
-
Vidyard's Michael Litt on Building a Startup Ecosystem in Waterloo (text, 2018)
-
From Selling Firecrackers To Landing $70 Million For His Canadian Startup (audio, text, 2018)
-
"Imposter Syndrome Is Real And Nothing To Be Ashamed Of" (text, 2018)
-
Processes Before Velocity: Why Your 100th Employee Will Change Your Company (audio, text, 2020)
Segment (S11)
- Success Without A Diploma: How 3 MIT Dropouts Made It Big (text, 2017)
- From Show HN to Series D (text, 2019)
- PMF (twitt, 2019)
- How MIT college kids founded multibillion-dollar company Segment (text, 2020)
- May 5, 2011 to Oct 12, 2020 — 9 years, 5 months to build a $3.2B SaaS company (twitt, 2020)
Parse (S11)
- How Tikhon Got into Y Combinator Twice (video, 2016)
- The Challenges a Repeat Founder Faces (video, 2017)
2012
Muse (W12)
- Female Founder Stories: Kathryn Minshew and Alex Cavoulacos (text)
- One-Minute Pressure Cooker: The Muse's Pitch (video, 2013)
- Kathryn Minshew at Startup School NY 2014 (video)
- 7 Classic Startup Founder Mistakes (And How to Avoid Them) (video, 2015)
- What Kathryn Minshew, Co-Founder of The Muse, Learned From an Earlier Failure (text, 2018)
- A Q&A With Kathryn Minshew, The Muse (2018)
- The Muse's Successful Application to Y Combinator (W12)
- The Muse Y Combinator W12 Application video
PlanGrid (W12)
- Founder Stories: Tracy Young of PlanGrid (YC W12) (text, 2014)
- Tracy Young on Scaling PlanGrid to 400+ People (text, video, 2019)
CoinBase (S12)
- Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong on Cryptocurrency and the Future of Decentralization (2021)
- Coinbase Listing: The Journey From Y Combinator to Nasdaq (text, 2021)
- Brian Armstrong seeking cofounder on HN (text, 2012)
- Coinbase YCombinator Demo Day Practice (video, 2012)
Mattermost (S12)
- Redpoint Founders Series: Ian Tien, Mattermost (video, 2020)
- Mattermost's Journey (text, 2021)
- The Mattermost Origin Story (text, 2021)
Referly/Mattermark (S12)
- Time to Say Goodbye Seattle, Hello San Francisco (text, 2010)
- Timeline: Starting Referly Took Me Three Years (text, 2012)
- Thoughts On YC Interview Prep (text, 2013)
- Zombie Startups (text, 2013)
- Is My Startup Burn Rate Normal? (text, 2014)
- Are you Managing the Signals Your Startup is Sending? (text, 2014)
- Female Founder Stories: Danielle Morrill, Founder of Mattermark (text, 2015)
- For Seed Stage Startups, It's Hire or Die (text, 2015)
- The Creative Destruction of Building and Growing a Career (audio, 2016)
- Danielle Morrill's guide to the galaxy (text, 2016)
- How Mattermark Acquired Early Users (video, 2016)
- Insights From A YC Alum On How To Prepare For The Y Combinator Interview (text, 2017)
- Mattermark YC Application
Soylent (S12)
- How to Make Good Decisions (according to science) ft. @John Coogan (video, 2021)
- 9 Y Combinator Secrets To Grow Your Business (video, 2021)
- How This Tweet Got Me $2 MILLION For My Startup (video, 2021)
- Y Combinator | How I Got In - TWICE! | 2021 Application & Interview Process Explained (video, 2021)
Eligible (S12)
- To get something great, you must risk something good (text, 2014)
- Almost dead (text, 2015)
- Why one of the only women to go through Y Combinator twice moved her company to NYC (text, 2017)
- How I Risked Everything To Build A $20M Company In 3 Years (text, 2018)
- Eligible Sales Plan & Compensation Letter (text, 2018)
- My Journey from Struggling Actress to Successful Tech CEO (text, 2019)
- Interview with Katelyn Gleason — CEO and Founder of Eligible (text, 2019)
- Why I started a company to feel less lonely in the world (text, 2019)
- Brave not perfect (text, 2019)
- Female Founder Stories: Katelyn Gleason, Founder of Eligible (text)
- YCombinator S12 Demo Day (video, 2012)
2013
InfluxData (W13)
Prizeo (W13)
- Y Combinator Lessons Learnt by Andrej Pancik (video, 2013)
- Represent Stories — Andrej Pančík (text, 2016)
Strikingly (W13)
- How A YCombinator Startup Is Born: The Story Of Strikingly (text, 2013)
- How to get into Y Combinator –- the No BS Approach (text, 2016)
- Strikingly – Out of Failure, a Star is Born (text, 2016)
Zenefits (W13)
- How a series of humiliating events led to one of the fastest-growing startups EVER (text, 2015)
- Zenefits Was the Perfect Startup. Then It Self-Disrupted (text, 2016)
- How to Raise Money with Marc Andreessen, Ron Conway, and Parker Conrad (video, 2017)
- How to Build Multi-Million Dollar Companies (text, video, 2017)
- Parker Conrad's hard-won billion dollar startup lessons (text, video, video2, 2020)
- The Comeback Of A Fallen Tech Unicorn CEO (text, 2020)
- The One Thing Everyone Knows About Building a Startup is Wrong with Parker Conrad (Rippling) (video, 2021)
- Parker Conrad: 'I like working with people who have a chip on their shoulder' (text, 2021)
Watsi (W13)
-
The Story Behind the Launch of Crowdfunding for Operations Startup Watsi (video, 2015)
Q&A with Watsi (video, 2015)
-
How Watsi is Crowdfunding Universal Healthcare By Personalizing Human Connections (video, 2015)
-
Grace Garey Speaks at Female Founders Conference (video, 2015)
-
Founder Stories: Grace Garey (text)
-
Ways we work (text)
-
Hack to start (audio, 2015)
-
The technology of transparency (text, 2015)
-
If fundraising is broken, fix it! How Watsi became the first Y Combinator non-profit (text, 2015)
-
What Startups Can Learn from Watsi's Wildly Successful Email Campaign (text)
Lollipuff (W13)
- Female Founder Stories: Fei Deyle (text, 2015)
- From electrical engineer to Y Combinator fashion startup founder (text, 2019)
- Lollipuff's Y Combinator Application Video
- Lollipuff @ Y Combinator Demo Day (W13)
DoorDash (S13)
- The Road to IPO (video, 2021)
- Lecture 8 - How to Get Started, Doing Things that Don't Scale, Press (video, 2014)
- DoorDash's Application Video for YC S13 (video)
- DoorDash at YC Summer 2013 Demo Day (video)
URX (S13)
- 1 year, 11 months at Google University (text, 2013)
- People and Pine Cones- URX's Y Combinator Story (text, 2013)
- 7 lessons learned growing from 4 to 20 people (text, 2015)
- Good Idea, Bad Startup (video, 2015)
- How to ace your YC interview (text, 2016)
- My biggest product strategy lesson learned from operating and selling URX (YC S13) (text, 2017)
- How startups can avoid flawed decision making (text, 2021)
- 5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Began Leading My Company (text, 2021)
Standard Treasury (S13)
- Getting in to YC (text, 2013)
- Advice on the YC Application (text, 2013)
- A (Successful) YC S13 Application (text, 2013)
- Building A Founding Team at Standard Treasury (text, 2013)
- Five Lessons from Building A Great Core Team at Standard Treasury (text, 2013)
- Going Through Y Combinator (S13): Nine Lessons Learned (text, 2013)
- Standard Treasury's Series A Pitch Deck (text, 2015)
- Founders and Mental Health (text, 2014)
- Mental Health, Trauma, and Startup Founders (text, 2014)
- My Mental Health Story: Depression, Plagiarism, and Analysis (text, 2014)
Watchsend (S13)
- How I learned to code (text, 2013)
- Y Combinator applicant advice (text, 2013)
- Insights from 6 hours of YC Mock Interviews (text, 2013)
Asseta (S13)
-
What to Do If You Don't Have a Technical Cofounder (text, 2020)
-
Advice for My Son (text, 2020)
-
32 Questions Founders Should Ask Investors (text, 2020)
-
Should You Quit Your Job and Start a Company? (text, 2020)
-
What's the Tempo of Your Start-up? (text, 2020)
-
Team Spotlight: Anton Brevde (text, 2020)
-
When to Hire a Chief of Staff? (text, 2020)
-
The Expert Problem (text, 2020)
-
Conquering Imposter Syndrome (text, 2020)
-
Move Fast and Don't Break Things (text, 2020)
-
High Expectations vs. Happiness (text, 2021)
One Month (S13)
- How a Non-technical Solo Founder Got Into Y Combinator (text, 2013)
- What is Y Combinator Like? (text, 2014)
- Y Combinator and The One Metric that Matters (text, video, 2014)
- How to get a busy person to respond to your email (text, 2014)
- How to get into Y Combinator (text, 2015)
- One Month's Y Combinator Application (text, 2013)
WebFlow (S13)
- How Webflow got into Y Combinator (text, 2015)
- From freelancer to founder: an interview with Webflow's CEO Vlad Magdalin (video, 2019)
- Grew no-code startup to $20M in rev, pioneering Pegasus movement (video, 2019)
- Founder Interview (video, 2020)
- The Future is No-Code (video, 2020)
- How Webflow went from almost bankrupt to building a no-code empire (text, 2020)
- Building an Enduring Company, One Hard Lesson at a Time (video, 2021)
- Quarterly community update and live Q&A with Vlad: Q3 2021 (video, 2021)
2014
Emailio (W14)
- Emailio, A Y Combinator Productivity Startup, Fixes Your Bad Email Habits (text, 2020)
- The Story of Martin Stoyanov -a Y Combinator Participant with a Mission to Disrupt the Way we Use Email (text, 2020)
Zinc (W14)
- How I "failed" at a YC startup, worked at early Stripe, and then raised $20M (text, 2021)
SketchDeck (W14)
- A company is just a belief engine (text, 2014)
- Advice for first-time founders (text, 2015)
- How to brand your startup (text, 2015)
- The Art of Shipping Early and Often (text, 2016)
- Managing your cofounder relationship for the long run (text, 2016)
- Letting your engineers choose what to build (text, 2017)
- What I wish I knew when I became CTO (text, 2018)
- Growth almost killed our company (text, 2019)
- SketchDeck CMO David Mack: Giving Feedback; How To Be Honest Without Being Hurtful (text, 2020)
- SketchDeck's Y Combinator W14 application
Clear (W14)
- How Delhi-Based Startup ClearTax Made It to Y Combinator (text, 2014)
- Here's why Indian startups must apply to Y Combinator (text, 2015)
- Archit Gupta of ClearTax On Cracking YCombinator (video, 2016)
- How ClearTax's Archit Gupta Found Mentors In Y Combinator And Paytm Founder (text, 2016)
- Y Combinator is like a B-school that helps develop a global peer network, says alumnus Archit Gupta (text, 2016)
- The first India-focused startup in Y Combinator, this dropout's venture files 3 per cent of India's tax today (text, 2016) email [email protected])
- From 1K Customers In First 11 Days To 1 Mn Today: ClearTax's Journey Post The YCombinator Stamp Of Approval (text, 2016)
Cruise (W14)
- The Story of Cruise (YC W14): How 4 people built a self driving car in 7 months. (text, 2014)
- Life Tips from Kyle Vogt of Cruise at Disrupt SF (video, 2016)
- The Startup That Could Help GM Beat Google to the Self-Driving Car (text, 2016)
- Kyle Vogt: Cruise Automation | Lex Fridman Podcast #14 (video, text, 2019)
- Y Combinator Application
Rickshaw (W14)
- Female Founder Stories: Divya Bhat, Founder of Rickshaw (YC W14) (text, 2015)
ProductHunt (S14)
- A Hopeful Applicant's Y Combinator Experience (text, 2011)
- Product Hunt Began as an Email List (text, 2013)
- The 20-Minute MVP (text, 2014)
- YC + PH (text, 2014)
- Making Product Hunt (text, 2014)
- How We Got Our First 2,000 Users Doing Things That Don't Scale (text, 2014)
- 3 Pieces of Advice for YC Applicants (text, 2014)
- "Should I apply to YC?" (text, 2014)
- How To Build World's #1 Product Launch Platform with a Globally Distributed Team: An Interview With the Founder of Product Hunt (text, 2018)
- 5 Years of Product Hunt (text, 2018)
- How we made our first dollar at Product Hunt (text, 2018)
- Ryan Hoover on Product Hunt's Acquisition and Lessons Learned About Launches with Dalton Caldwell (video, 2019)
- Ryan Hoover on Startups, Success and Staying Curious (text, 2020)
Ginkgo Bioworks (S14)
- Engineering A Better Future (video, 2021)
- Interview: Jason Kelly CEO of Ginkgo Bioworks (video, 2021)
- Jason Kelly of Ginkgo Bioworks, a Synthetic Biology Co. That's Starting a New Industrial Revolution (video, 2021)
- Ginkgo Bioworks at YC Summer 2014 Demo Day (video)
Snappr (S14)
- What the Y Combinator experience actually looks like (text)
- Kicking off with a snapshot of ... ourselves! And our YC story so far (text)
- Snappr YC Demo Day Pitch - Opening
Front (S14)
- A month at Y Combinator: What it's like after you've been accepted (text, 2014)
- Mathilde Collin, Front — Founder Story (text, 2018)
- Mathilde Collin on Feature Prioritization and Employee Retention at Front (video, 2018)
- After PMF: People, Customers, Sales by Mathilde Collin (video, 2018)
- Take a look into Front's Journey to get into Y Combinator (text, 2020)
Tinker (S14)
- A simple method to prepare for an interview at YCombinator (text, 2017)
- A Simple Method to Prepare for an Interview at YCombinator — Updated 2020 (text, 2020)
Aptible (S14)
- How to Get Into Y Combinator (text, 2014)
Zen99 (S14)
- Why You Should Apply to Y Combinator (text, 2015)
- How to Prepare for the Y Combinator Interview (text, 2015)
Shout (S14)
- Our Journey To and Through YC (text, 2014)
2015
Staffjoy (YCF 15)
- Insights from the creators of Staffjoy (text, 2015)
- Staffjoy founders on the Y Combinator Fellowship experience (text, 2016)
- Denouement (text, 2017)
- Staffjoy's Pitch Decks That Raised $1.7M
- Staffjoy's YC Fellowship Application
HigherMe (W15)
- "Hi! My name is Rob, and I used to own 7 ice cream stores." (text, 2015)
- Almost Inconceivable: Startups, Planning, Long Odds, and Babies (text, 2017)
- Don't Burn Money Linearly (text, 2018)
- Lessons learned through raising $1,000,000 from angel investors (text, 2018)
- Your chances of getting into Y Combinator are not 1 in 100 (text, 2018)
- From Ice Cream to Y Combinator: An Interview With Rob Hunter (text, 2020)
Gradberry/Tara AI (W15)
- From Dubai to Buffalo: The journey of Iba Masood (text, 2018)
- Raising a Series A as a Female Founder (video, 2019)
- A framework on how to find the force multiplier co-founder (text, 2019)
- How to setup company culture and core values at your early-stage startup (text, 2020)
Cleanly (W15)
- Itay Forer of Cleanly shares his Y Combinator Journey (text, 2021)
Flip (W15)
- Is Silicon Valley's Pioneering Sneakerhead (text, 2016)
- Silicon Valley Insights (text, 2016)
- How Building A Sneaker Marketplace Answered A Billion $ Question (video, 2019)
- Flip (YC W2015) Application Video
Gitlab (W15)
- GitLab from YC to IPO (text, 2021)
- Our Y Combinator experience (text, 2016)
- What Founders Ask Founders About Getting Into Y Combinator (text, 2016)
- Gitlab's Secret to Managing 160 Employees in 160 Locations (video, 2017)
- GitLab's Application for Y Combinator Winter 2015 (text, 2016)
- GitLab Y Combinator Demo Day Winter 2015 (video)
- GitLab Y Combinator Alumni Demo Day Winter 2015 (video)
- Gitlab history (text)
Replika (W15)
80 000 hours (S15)
- What's it like being a nonprofit in Y Combinator? (text, 2015)
- How can founders improve their social skills? (text, 2017)
- A Guide to Machine Learning PhDs (text, 2017)
- Application
New Story (S15)
- How New Story Got Into Y Combinator (text, 2015)
- What's It Like Being a NonProfit in Y Combinator? Five Questions with New Story CEO Brett Hagler (text, 2015)
- 3D Home Printing for the Developing World – Alexandria Lafci and Brett Hagler of New Story Charity (video, 2018)
- New Story YC Demo Day 2015
Shotput (S15)
- The Hack that got me into Y Combinator (text, 2019)
- How I got the Y Combinator interview 46 days late (text, 2019)
- My First Y Combinator Application that got me the interview (text, 2019)
- Pitching a bunch of millionaires for 10 minutes (text, 2019)
- Derivative/d Y Combinator 2014 Application
Cofactor Genomics (S15)
- YC Backs Cofactor Genomics To Pursue RNA Testing, Which Could Offer Better Diagnoses Than DNA (text, 2015)
- how-to-apply-to-y-combinator (text, 2015)
- Lessons Learned from Cofactor's Y Combinator Experience 7-months later (text, 2016)
ScentBird (S15)
- Сulture is Something That Works When Your Policy Fails (text, 2020)
- How to Manage a Team of 43 Developers in Different Time Zones (text, 2020)
- How many programmers does it take to sell perfume on the Internet? (text, 2020)
2016
Boom (W16)
- On Starting and Scaling Boom (text)
- E638: Blake Scholl, CEO & Founder of Boom, resurrects the dream of the supersonic passenger airplane (video, 2016)
- Blake Scholl on supersonic airplanes and how he built a $1B company (video, 2019)
- RTCA 2019 Symposium: 02 Opening Keynote: Boom Supersonic With Blake Scholl (video, 2019)
- Building a supersonic jet startup with Blake Scholl - Podcast Ep 1 (video, 2020)
Revl (W16)
- Revl, Interview with CEO Eric Sanchez (text, 2016)
- There and Back Again. A Journey With Revl Arc (text, 2017)
- Revl Deck Crowdfunder
Outschool (W16)
- Outschooling in the Bay Area (text, 2015)
- What I learned from my father (text, 2017)
- Outschool co-founder Amir Nathoo | Top tips for startups (text, 2017)
- My journey to founding Outschool (text, 2017)
Instabug (W16)
- Political Turmoil Leaves Cofounders of Egypt-based Instabug in Limbo (text, 2013)
- What it's like to build a startup in a country that's rebuilding itself (text, 2015)
- ArabConnect: Omar Gabr discusses SoLoMo (video, 2015)
- 6 Reasons Why In-App Feedback Is A Must While Beta Testing (text, 2015)
- How to Launch Your Mobile App in 16 Steps (text, 2015)
- Lessons 10 Years On (video, 2018)
- Instabug Untold Stories (text, 2018)
- What It's Like Dealing With Silicon Valley Customers From Egypt (text, 2019)
- How to Find Over 200+ Beta Testers for Free (text, 2019)
- Serendipitous discovery (video, 2020)
Paystack (W16)
- Paystack's Y Combinator Application (text, 2017)
- How to put together a strong Y Combinator application (text, 2018)
- Helping African Businesses Get Paid, Shola Akinlade of Paystack (video, text, 2018)
- Building from Ground Up (video, 2020)
Superside (W16)
- How We Got into Y Combinator (text, 2016)
- What to Expect as an International Founder at Y Combinator (text, 2016)
- What is Superside? How is it Different from a Design Agency or Freelance Marketplace? (video, 2020)
GetAccept (W16)
- Our story
- From Malmö to Silicon Valley in less than two years - the story of GetAccept (text, 2017)
- How 4 Swedes got their SaaS accepted into Y Combinator while still at $0 MRR (text, 2019)
- 5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Successful App or SaaS (text, 2021)
- Secure Series B and build a global business in Malmö (video, text, 2021)
- GetAccept - YC W'16 Demo Day
LendEDU (W16)
- How LendEDU made it into Y Combinator on their second try (text, 2016)
- How LendEDU Raised the Most Valuable Seed Round Imaginable with Y Combinator (text, 2019)
Innov8 (S16)
- Founder Stories: Ritesh Malik of Innov8 (text, 2017)
- Founder Mindset - Fundamental for startups (video, 2020)
- Startup Journey from 0-200Cr (video, 2021)
- Innov8 pitch in Ycombinator [PITCH ANALYSIS]
- Innov8 Coworking at theY Combinator Demo Day SS'16
Iris Automation (S16)
- Iris Automation gives drones situational awareness, making autonomous delivery a reality (text, 2016)
- The story of how two college friends joined forces to disrupt an industry with Iris Automation (text, 2019)
Burrow (S16)
- Burrow is Casper for Designer Sofas (text, 2016)
- How I Raised It with Stephen Kuhl of Burrow.com (audio, 2018)
- The Story of How a Sofa Startup Got Into Y Combinator with Just a Pitch Deck (text, 2019)
- How 'Couch In a Box' Company Burrow Leveraged Big and Small Investors for a $4.3 Million Seed Round (text, 2019)
- Burrow CEO Stephen Kuhl: The shift to e-commerce is here to stay (text, 2020)
Lendsnap (S16)
- Lendsnap Lets You Apply for a Mortgage in Under 30 Minutes (text, 2016)
- The True Story of How Orion Willow Got Lendsnap Accepted Into Y Combinator (text, 2019)
Suiteness (S16)
- Founder Interviews: Kyle Killion of Suiteness (text, 2019)
- Kyle Killion's story of getting Suiteness into Y Combinator along with tips on how to apply (text, 2019)
Jumpcut (S16)
- #11: Kong Pham - Jumpcut - Y Combinator Alumni Interviews (YC S16) (audio, 2020)
- How I Raised $2 Million From Investors (My YC Demo Day Pitch Breakdown) (video, 2020)
- Entrepreneur Gains#11 - Kong Pham - Jumpcut (Y Combinator S16) (video, 2020)
- Prior YouTube Star Launches Startup and Does $12M in Sales! (video, 2020)
- Kong Pham on Y Combinator and unconventional business strategies? (video, 2021)
- Going viral & dating tips (we got DEEP!) with YouTuber (Simple Pickup) turned YC founder (video, 2021)
Nova Credit (S16)
- Founder Stories: Nicky Goulimis of Nova Credit (text, 2017)
- Path to Y Combinator Acceptance and Beyond (text, 2019)
- Immigrants - A Conversation with Nicky Goulimis (video, 2019)
- How to scale and expand, the journey of a female founder (video, 2020)
- How Effective is Fintech in Reducing Inequality (video, 2020)
- Nicky Goulimis | The Breakfast Show US (video, 2020)
- Interview with Nicky Goulimis (video, 2020)
Saleswhale (S16)
- What the Y Combinator experience is like, according to 4 graduates (text, 2018)
- Singapore's Saleswhale raises $5.3M to bring AI to sales and marketing teams (text, 2019)
- The Y Combinator Alum who returned to Singapore to build Saleswhale (text, audio, 2019)
- I'm a CEO and this is what I care about from Marketing (text, 2020)
- What is Collaborative Intelligence? (text, 2020)
- How Your Startup Can Conquer the U.S. Market, from Southeast Asia (video, 2020)
- Hubspot + Saleswhale: Kickstart your ABM campaign in minutes, not months (video, 2020)
- Run best-in-class demand gen plays with Saleswhale's new Topic Library (text, 2020)
- Our $90,000 mistake & why I would do it all over again (text1, text2, 2020)
- Gabriel Lim Co Founder and CEO Full SmartChickens Episode Final (video, 2021)
The Flex Company (S16)
- Why More Women Should Apply to Y Combinator (text, 2016)
- Choose Love Over Fear: How We Grew to $4M in Under 1 Year (text, 2017)
- The Flex Company's Successful Y Combinator S16 Application (text, 2018)
- The real reasons we made Flex (text, 2020)
- How we took Flex® from concept to reality (text, 2020)
- Flex CEO Lauren Schulte Wang on gratitude (text, 2020)
2017
WaystoCap (W17)
- Early days, Y Combinator experience and more (text, 2017)
- The Morrocan Startup providing a marketplace to connect African businesses (text, 2020)
Solugen (W17)
- On sales, product roadmaps, and building a more sustainable future (text, 2020)
- My Climate Journey (text, audio, 2021)
UpKeep (W17)
- UpKeep is now Part of the Y Combinator (W17) Family! (text, 2017)
- Q&A Founders Story with Ryan at UpKeep (text, 2021)
- Ryan Chan the founder of UpKeep shares his Y Combinator Journey (text, 2019)
- Bootstrapping With A Paycheck to YCombinator and $10M Series A: Ryan Chan, CEO of UpKeep (Part 1) (text, 2019)
- How an App Developer turned His No-Income Startup into a Multi-Million Dollar Venture (text, 2021)
Boxouse (W17)
- Y Combinator brings hardware veteran Luke Iseman on full-time to help startups grow faster (text, 2015)
- #268 – An Interview with Luke Iseman of yCombinator (audio, 2015)
- Starting a Hardware Startup (video, 2015)
- How to Get Into Y Combinator (video, 2015)
- This couple couldn't afford to live in San Francisco, so they're building tiny homes made from shipping containers (text, 2016)
Armory (W17)
- DROdio's Bio (text)
- DROdio .Readme (text, 2019)
- Is Y Combinator worth it? (text, 2020)
- YCombinator W17 Armory Demo Day
Neema (W17)
- Y Combinator, how to nail the interview (text, 2017)
Simple Habit (W17)
- Simply Mindful: How Burnout Inspired One Entrepreneur's Million-Dollar Idea (text, 2018)
- Women's History Month Interview Series with Yunha Kim (text, 2020)
- Yunha Kim: Steps of Risk Pave the Success of Simple Habit (text, 2020)
- Yunha Kim
- Application
Brex (W17)
- Henrique Dubugras and Anu Hariharan Discuss Brex's Corporate Card For Startups (text, video, 2018)
- I Am Living Proof Of The American Dream: With Henrique Dubugras Co-founder of Brex (text, 2018)
- How the 22-year-old founders of Brex built a billion-dollar business in less than 2 years (text, 2018)
- How This Entrepreneur Created A $1.1 Billion Company At 22 Years Old (text, 2019)
- The State of Fintech with Henrique Dubugras (video, 2021)
- Dreaming big and achieving big: Henrique Dubugras, Brex (audio, text, 2021)
Thematic (S17)
- Thematic is taking part in YCombinator! (text, 2017)
- How to make the most out of YC Startup School (text, 2018)
- Thematic plans to become a $1 billion company (text, 2018)
- Commercializing AI research: Lessons learned and Thematic's journey (text, 2019)
- What Chief Customer Officers can learn from YCombinator's approach to disruption (text, 2019)
- How we moved our startup from New Zealand to Silicon Valley (text, 2019)
- How to Start a Startup for AI Engineers (video, 2021)
Peergrade/Eduflow (S17)
-
4 lessons we learned from Y Combinator (text, 2018)
-
Peer feedback with Peergrade by CEO David Kofoed Wind (video, 2018)
-
Acquiring new teachers for free with David Kofoed Wind, Peergrade (video, 2019)
-
Founder Interviews: David Kofoed Wind of Peergrade (text, 2019)
-
The story of when 8 x Co-Founders flew from Denmark to San Francisco for Y Combinator (text, 2019)
Guggy (S17)
- Guggy's story of evolving from "just another Israeli Startup" to a YC startup (text, 2019)
RideAlong (S17)
- RideAlong's Journey Into Y Combinator (text, 2019)
Roofr (S17)
- Y Combinator Founder Richard Nelson Talks Using Beta Blockers And Toastmasters to Rock YC Demo Day (text, 2017)
- Growth & Roofr's Journey - Our 2017 In Review (text, 2018)
- Richard Nelson Y Combinator Pitch (video)
70 Million Jobs/Commissary Club (S17)
- Announcing 70MillionJobs (text, 2917)
- I'm Richard Bronson, founder/CEO of 70MillionJobs, former "Wolf of Wall Street" partner. Spent 22 months in a federal prison, now run Y-Combinator startup that finds jobs for 70 million ex-offenders. AMA. (text, 2017)
- This CEO Wants To Hire 70 Million People (text, 2017)
- From Wolf of Wall Street to a "Made Man" in Silicon Valley (text, 2019)
- "Wolf of Wall Street" Works to Help 70 Million Americans with Records (text, 2020)
- Prison is my baseline (text, 2020)
2018
Let's Do This (W18)
- Fenner's, start-ups and sport-star investors (text)
- How two college friends got Serena Williams and Usain Bolt to back their business (text, 2021)
Spinal Singularity/UroDev Medical (W18)
- A Thanksgiving story: Life-changing injury doesn't dim Marine's gratitude (text, 2013)
- From Special Operations To Startup Founder (text, 2016)
- From veteran to entrepreneur: Spinal Singularity founder shares his journey (text, 2016)
- The Story of Capt. Derek Herrera, USMC (Ret.) (text, 2017)
- How a paralyzed veteran is taking action to help other wounded warriors (text, 2019)
Veriff (W18)
- Ycombinator, $7,700,000, Earning the trust of the internet (video, 2018)
- Kaarel Kotkas "Y Combinator and growing as hell" (video, 2019)
- Veriff in 2020: The Story So Far (text, 2020)
- An interview with Kaarel & Janer about 5 years in Veriff (text, 2020)
- Journey from Estonia to YCombinator to United States (audio, 2021)
- Kaarel Kotkas of Veriff: Five Things I Learned As A Twenty-Something Founder (text, 2021)
- A non-founder's guide to the galaxy of Y Combinator (text, 2017)
- On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up The Tech Scene (text, 2020)
Runa (W18)
- To do or not to do Y-Combinator? (text, 2018)
- YC application
- YC Application video
- YC Demo Day Pitch
Atrium (W18)
- E900 Justin Kan of Justin.tv, Twitch, Atrium: live-stream video pioneer, YC, failures & successes (video, 2019)
- I Messed Up and I'm Sorry (video, 2021)
- Twitch founder who sold for $970 million chats with a guy with $970 in his bank account (video, 2021)
Vanta (W18)
- From YC darling to fundraising powerhouse (text, audio, 2021)
- Early Engineer at Vanta (YC W18): Tom Denham (text, 2021)
Nuvocargo (W18)
- Y Combinator as a solo nontechnical founder (text, 2018)
- Y Combinator: Application & interview advice from a Winter '18 alumni (text, 2018)
OpenLand (W18)
- The Ultimate Guide to YCombinator Interview Preparation (text, 2018)
- OpenLand YC Interview Answers (text, 2018)
Proof/Jarvis (W18)
- How We Got Into Y Combinator After Failing Miserably The First Time (text, 2018)
- Is Y Combinator Worth It? A Founder's Experience (text, 2018)
- Y Combinator Demo Day Pitch (video, 2018)
Repl.it (W18)
- Former Facebook engineer quit to build the programming tool he always wanted (text, 2018)
- Rejected Then Recruited: Our Journey into Y Combinator (text, 2018)
- Repl.it CEO Amjad Masad is democratizing coding for all (video, 2020)
- Amjad Masad pitches early stage Repl.it to Daniel Gross (video, 2020)
- The Future of Code (video, 2021)
- I dreaded the idea of starting a company. (twitt, 2021)
OpenPhone (S18)
- How To Prepare For Your Y Combinator Interview (text, 2018)
- 4 Unexpected Lessons I've Learned After Going Through Y Combinator This Year (text, 2018)
- The application that got OpenPhone into Y Combinator
- 1-minute video
Modern Treasury (S18)
- Why We're Building Modern Treasury (text, 2018)
- Modern Treasury: The Quadrillion $ Quest (text, 2021)
Easol (S18)
- Branding, Owning Mistakes and the Y Combinator Experience (video, 2021)
Alpha Vantage (S18)
- The Harvard MBAs Trying To Upend Stock API Investing (text, 2018)
- This 90 second YC Demo Day pitch raised millions for my startup! (video, 2018)
Goodly (S18)
- 1-on-1 chat with Greg Poulin D'16, Co-founder and CEO of Goodly (text, video, 2020)
- YC Application
Momentus (S18)
- My story (text, 07.08.2018)
- My interview for WSJ (text, 07.08.2020)
- Article for TechCrunch (text, 18.08.2020)
2019
Deel (W19)
- Deel's Experience at Y-Combinator (text, 2020)
- On another level: Israeli FinTech Unicorn raises $425M at a $5.5B valuation (text, 2021)
Our World in Data (W19)
Demodesk (W19)
- The story behind Demodesk (text, 2019)
- How we got into Y Combinator and what we've learned on our journey (text, 2019)
Rebank (W19)
- How We Got Into Y Combinator (Part 1) (text, 2021)
- How We Got Into Y Combinator (Part 2) (text, 2021)
InEvent (S19)
- Pedro Goes of InEvent shares his Y Combinator Journey (text, 2021)
- Pedro Goes, InEvent (video, 2021)
- Using online events to generate leads (video, 2021)
- Application that got InEvent into Y Combinator.
- InEvent - Founders video
Multis (S19)
- How was YC? (text, 2019)
- Multis at Y Combinator's Demo Day
- Multis Application to YC
Prolific (S19)
- From Oxford to Y Combinator (text, 2019)
- Reflecting on Y Combinator: 3 Lessons We've Learnt about Growth and Culture (text, 2019)
- YC application
- Prolific Founder Video
Kraftful (S19)
- Podcast: Google's Nest exec isn't into smart homes (audio, 2019)
- 4 Crucial Keys to Get Into Y Combinator (text, 2019)
- How life prepared me for building a startup in 2020 (text, 2020)
- Keep your eyes on the users (text, 2020)
- Being a Toddler Mom CEO during a Pandemic (text, 2020)
Data Mechanics (S19)
- Our Experience Going Through YCombinator (text, 2020)
Wren (S19)
- A Day in the Life of Y Combinator (text, 2020)
- Y Combinator-backed Project Wren is aiming to make carbon offsets more consumer friendly (text, 2019)
- At the end of my freshman year I hacked the key to personal growth (text, 2020)
- Applying to YC Early Decision (text, 2019)
Mighty (S19)
- The first 18 months of a startup (text, 2021)
2020
Mistro/Stable (W20)
- Violet Alumni Spotlight: Sarah Ahmad, Co-Founder & CEO at Mistro (text, 2020)
- What happened when we pivoted 2 weeks before the Y Combinator interview + advice on applying (text, 2021)
- 100 businesses paid to use Stable before we wrote a line of code — here's how we did it (text, 2021)
- From college student to CEO (text, audio, 2021)
- Mistro - YC Application
Termii (W20)
- Meet YC (W20) Backed Termii — the Twilio for Africa (text, 2020)
- Gbolade's — YC Experience (text, 2020)
- Termii YC Application
WorkPay (W20)
-
WorkPay Graduates from Y Combinator (YC) W2020 Class (text, 2020)
Liveflow (W20)
- LiveFlow Y Combinator Experience Retrospective (text, 2021)
PostHog (W20)
- The time before YC (text, 2021)
- Moving to San Francisco (text, 2021)
- Pivot to PostHog (text, 2021)
- The YC Interview (text, 2021)
- After the HN launch (text, 2021)
- How we raised $3M for an open source project (text, 2021)
- Building an all-remote company from scratch (text, 2021)
- Why you may not need a sales team (text, 2021)
- PostHog raises $12 million in funding led by GV and Y Combinator (text, 2021)
- A story about pivots (text, 2021)
- Winning from the back - late mover advantage (text, 2021)
- Optimize for not breaking up with your co-founder (text, 2021)
Cotter/Typedream (W20)
- How to Prepare for your Y Combinator Interview (text, 2020)
- Building in Public with Michelle Marcelline (video, 2021)
- Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur: How Michelle Marcelline Went From Working For an Insurance Company to Founding Her Own Company (text, 2021)
Farel (S20)
- A Rising Tide Lifts All Planes (text, 2021)
- How to Quickly Test Your Business Idea: The Case of Farel (text, 2021)
- How to Build a Team into a Startup (text, 2021)
- Selling as an Enterprise Startup with no Product (text, 2021)
Fig (S20)
- Launching Fig (text, 2021)
- Launch HN: Fig (YC S20) – Autocomplete for the Terminal (text, 2021)
- Brendan Falk, Matt Schrage - Fig (video, 2021)
- S4 E8: Brendan & Matt, Fig (audio, 2021)
Porter (S20)
- Our Journey Building Porter (text, 2021)
webapp.io (S20)
- How to get into Y Combinator: application tips from the founders of webapp.io (text, 2021)
Virtually (S20)
- How to Ace the Y Combinator Application (text+application, 2020)
- Being a Founder in the First-Ever YCombinator Remote Batch (text, 2020)
- At the start of a company's life, sales don't come from clever persuasion. They come from building trust. (text, 2020)
- Ep: 197: How this former Ex-Facebook Engineer has build an online learning platform with Ish Baid (audio, 2020)
- Why we're building Virtually - Our Mission Statement (text, 2020)
- My Experience Going Through On Deck Scale (text, 2021)
- My 5-year Journey to Joining Y Combinator (text, 2021)
- Going Through the First Remote Batch of Y Combinator (video, 2021)
2021
Chatbiz (W21)
- The Journey of Chatbiz.id to Southeast Asia (text, 2021)
- Chatbiz.id (YC W2020) Application Video
MagicBell (W21)
- How my lifestyle business enabled my gender transition and, why I wouldn't trade it for building a unicorn (text, 2019)
- Starting a new tech business as a transgender woman (text, 2020)
- A Quora Designer Breaks Down the Notification Maze (text, 2020)
- 5 Valuable Lessons Learned From Building a B2B SaaS Business (text, 2020)
- The YCombinator Experience - Remote Edition (text, 2021)
- Meet MagicBell, the startup empowering product teams to build relevant notification experiences (text, 2021)
- MagicBell - YC W21 Application
- MagicBell's YC application video
Waydev (W21)
- 4 lessons I learned about getting into Y Combinator (after 13 applications) (text, 2021)
- Vision is not everything, says successful multi-time Y Combinator applicant (text, 2021)
Wasp (W21)
- Journey to YCombinator (text, 2021)
- Following YC, Wasp raised $1.5M Seed Round led by Lunar Ventures and HV Capital (text, 2021)
- Our fundraising learnings - 250+ meetings in 98 days to the oversubscribed round (text, 2021)
- ProductHunt launch
- HackerNews Launch
Clear (W21)
- How I got into Y Combinator with a 4 day old idea whilst still at university (video, 2021)
- How to manage your time/ how I built a YC startup whilst still at university (video, 2021)
Awesomic (S21)
- Awesomic startup journey: from $0 to $100K ARR (text, 2021)
- Launch HN: Awesomic (YC S21)
Lago (S21)
- Taking part in Y Combinator from Europe: is it worth it? (text, 2021)
- Being startup employee number one (text, 2021)
MindFi (S21)
- Meditation didn't fit my busy life. I found this eye-opening way to fix it. (text, 2018)
- CSTV Ep 42 :: A Conversation with Bjorn Lee (video, 2018)
- A day in the life of a meditating CEO (text, 2018)
- MindFi.co founder Bjorn Lee has built an algorithm for mental health and wellness (text, 2021)
- Diving Deep Into Mental Health (video, 2021)
- How to get into Y Combinator (video, 2021)
- Rising from the valley (video, 2021)
Supernote/Metlo (S21)
- The application that got Metlo into Y Combinator (text, 2021)
- YC Application Video 1 Supernote
ContainIQ (S21)
- What It Was Like Doing Y Combinator a Second Time (text, 2021)
- Interview with Nate Matherson, CEO of ContainIQ (video, 2021)
+ add your story
to be continued…