Y Combinator
also referred to as: yc
40 statements across 22 episodes · 11 bullish · 4 bearish · 19 people on the record · first statement Apr 17, 2023 by Mike Katchen · said 332 times in 57 episodes since 2023 · across every show →
Mentions by year
brought up most by Pablo Srugo (117), David Paffenholz (17), Dylan Fox (16), Pablo Palafox (15), Mark Hughes (14), Marty Kausas (11), Immad Akhund (10), Chaz Englander (9)
tap a year for its mentions
2026 92 mentions in 13 episodes 7 per episode
- He exited for $100M+. Then raised $250M in 18 months. | Dileep Thazhmon, Founder of Jeeves · PMF Show
- He hit $1M ARR by sending 500,000 cold emails—then raised a $25M Series A in 6 days. | Mark Hughe... · PMF Show
- She bet on a consumer app when every VC wanted B2B—then grew to $10M ARR. | Anada Lakra, Founder ... · PMF Show
- How I grew my AI startup to $3M ARR in 3 months. | Chaz Englander, Founder of ModelML · PMF Show
- He raised $150M with $0 revenue. Then hit $1M ARR in 4 months. | Michel Tricot, Co-Founder of Air... · PMF Show
- It took him 4 years to launch—then he hit $1M ARR in 30 days. | Siqi Chen, Founder of Runway · PMF Show
- His startup powers OpenAI's Voice Mode. Last month, they became a unicorn. | Russ d’Sa, Co-Founde... · PMF Show
- 180 VCs rejected him—then a $60K billboard got him to $2M ARR in 4 months. | Isaiah Granet, CEO o... · PMF Show
- 5 more episodes that year, every mention in 2026 →
2025 125 mentions in 21 episodes 6 per episode
- 1st time founder completely pivots after YC—then grows 30x in a year to $2.2M ARR. | Pablo Palafo... · PMF Show
- He killed a viral app with 50k users. 2 years later, he hit $10M ARR and raised $30M from Sequoia... · PMF Show
- Post-YC, he split with his co-founder—then grew profitably to $2M ARR with just 5 people. | Jon Y... · PMF Show
- How Mercury Hit $500M ARR—then raised $300M from Sequoia at $3.5B. | Immad Akhund, CEO & Founder ... · PMF Show
- 1st-time founder grows AI headshot app from $0 to $10M ARR in 2 years—with no funding. | Wesley T... · PMF Show
- How Gusto’s $10B founder raised $6M, built a team of 5—& hit $5M ARR in just 2 years. | Josh Reev... · PMF Show
- TechCrunch called this YC founder a fraud at 18—then he built a $10M ARR fintech. | Sahil Phadnis... · PMF Show
- He went viral at 11 y/o—built the world's best dictation app, then raised a $30M Series A. | Tana... · PMF Show
- 13 more episodes that year, every mention in 2025 →
2024 110 mentions in 20 episodes 6 per episode
- This solo founder bet on AI 7 years ago. Now he has 5,000 customers & $115M raised. | Dylan, Foun... · PMF Show
- YC said his idea "would never work". So he lived in his office for months—then raised $17M from a... · PMF Show
- How to Raise a Round in 2024 w/ Lee Silverstone (3x Founder) · PMF Show
- Reddit hit 1M users in 1 year. The key was listening to users—& not doing what they said. | Reddi... · PMF Show
- YC founder raises $3.5M, keeps team to 3 people—then grows 10x to $2M ARR in 1 year. | Benjamin E... · PMF Show
- 1st-time AI founder grows from $0 to $1.3M ARR in 8 months. Here's exactly how he did it. | Jaspa... · PMF Show
- VC funding is not popping back. THIS is the new normal—here's how to adjust. | Peter Walker, Hea... · PMF Show
- Q2 Early-Stage Venture Report w/ Carta’s Head of Insights: Valuations, Round Sizes, Graduation Ra... · PMF Show
- 12 more episodes that year, every mention in 2024 →
2023 5 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
- Mike Katchen, Co-Founder of Wealthsimple | How to Come up with an Idea that Gets Product Market Fit · PMF Show
- I Was Supposed to Be a Millionaire at 25… Instead, I Went Bankrupt. · PMF Show
- Hongwei Liu, Founder of MappedIn | How to Find Product Market Fit · PMF Show
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
Everything said about Y Combinator, oldest first
Apr 17, 2023
Mar 8, 2024 positive
Apr 8, 2024
Fox entered YC as a solo founder 30 days past the deadline
“And so I submitted an application to YC for their summer batch. This is like summer of 20 17. And it was 30 days past the deadline. So I was like single founder past the deadline. There's no way I'm going to get in. You know, I was planning to just work on it,…”
Apr 8, 2024 neutral
Apr 8, 2024
Fox: Post-YC founders should slow down and plan two-year horizons
“I would have advised my, myself to take a longer term view in the first year, especially coming out of YC, like slow down. Now that you're done YC, what do you want to accomplish over the next two years? Like, where do you want to be in two years? And then jus…”
Jun 10, 2024 negative
Aug 22, 2024 neutral
Aug 22, 2024 negative
Walker: Post-money SAFEs primarily serve investors, not founders
“The switch from pre to post money was not a founder friendly thing. YC sometimes makes it sound as though that was in service of founders, and you can make some case that it is more transparent, it's more certainty, et cetera, but that is primarily in service …”
Nov 8, 2024 neutral
Walker: Carta data reflects immediate market adoption when YC alters default SAFEs
“Like literally you can go into our data and find the moment where YC changes what the default is on their website. And it's very obvious in the numbers. What people are using because they're just downloading it from YC.”
Dec 19, 2024
Pylon retained $3.1M of its $3.3M seed funding before raising Series A
“We were already cashflow positive. And so we did not need the money. We weren't thinking about raising money. We were, yeah, we like had spent at this point, we had raised like 3.3 total with like YC's initial check. And we had like 3.1 in the bank.”
Dec 19, 2024 positive
Pylon Reached $120K ARR by End of YC Batch
“In fact, by the end of our YC batch, we were at a 120 K in ARR, and so, like, turns out, like, people were buying Zendesk, they were buying Intercom, and it wasn't working because they did all their support in Slack, and so they literally were, in some cases, …”
Dec 19, 2024
Dec 19, 2024
Dec 19, 2024 negative
Accepting introductions from investors who pass on your startup creates negative signal
“The other, like, common mistake I think people make is they will accept intros to investors from other investors, and I learned this from YC, that's, like, a big no-no. So, for example, let's say I talk to an angel investor, and they're like, oh, like, this is…”
Dec 19, 2024
Kausas: Pylon raised a $3.2M seed round led by General Catalyst in 6 days
“We end up you know, we end up raising a seed round from general catalyst right before the end of the batch. So, you know, we had like a big LinkedIn post about that where, Hey, we raised our seed round in six days 3.2 million dollars GC led it.”
Dec 19, 2024 negative
Jan 6, 2025 positive
Jan 30, 2025
Palafox: HappyRobot pivoted away from computer vision on YC Demo Day
“On demo day, I literally slag Diana, like Diana, we're pivoting. Like demo day, like we have the slides prepared, the presentation prepared, and like we're pivoting, like away completely from this computer vision platform thing that we've built, this auto labe…”
Jan 30, 2025 positive
Feb 20, 2025 neutral
Amplitude founders pivoted from Android voice app Sonalight into analytics
“They had gone through YC. They were actually doing a text by voice company called Sonalite. And so they were trying to kind of do Siri before Siri's really a thing. And they were doing it for Android. And, you know, I'll go into that story a little bit more, b…”
Mar 13, 2025
Mar 13, 2025 neutral
Yoo: Suger pitched a different idea during its YC interview
“When we actually applied for YC, it wasn't even around marketplaces. It was around usage and so lo and behold, like we show up to the interview and it's a 10 minute, like high pressure interview. And the first thing we see in the interview is just, hey, we're …”
Mar 20, 2025 bullish
Srugo: Happy Robot reached $2M ARR in one year after logistics pivot
“Ended up building And AI agents in the logistics space that answers calls from like fright, like basically if you have a truck and you're like trying to pick up loads, you call, but instead of a human answering, now it's their AI agent that answers. And they w…”
Apr 24, 2025 neutral
Y Combinator initially rejected Tian's first AI image generator idea
“We applied to YC with it, and, like, they weren't a fan. They were, like well, actually, we applied with the idea. And then they were like, how quickly can you build it? And then we built it in a few days but they still didn't accept us. They accepted us later…”
Apr 24, 2025 positive
Jun 16, 2025
Dearsley: Michael Seibel Accurately Predicted Team Would Pivot Every Three Months
“Michael Seibel, he was one of our group partners at YC. He told us quite early on, I'm Skeptical that you guys are going to continue doing what you're doing for more than three months if it isn't working after three months. And he was right every single time. …”
Jul 21, 2025 neutral
Jul 21, 2025 positive
Sep 8, 2025
Jan 5, 2026 neutral
Feb 12, 2026
Feb 12, 2026
Englander: Fat Llama raised £1.1M across two rounds before Y Combinator
“I'd say that one of the things that we don't talk about enough was like, you know, between starting and getting on YC, we raised the million pounds and that was like straight scrappiness. I remember we actually raised two rounds, a 100,000 pound round, and the…”
Mar 2, 2026 neutral
Apr 20, 2026
180 VCs rejected Bland AI in 2023, doubting phone calls would survive
“The total amount was roughly a 180 investors over three weeks I met with, and I got more or less all of them saying no, and their number one piece of feedback Which was soul crushing was we don't think people will be doing phone calls a year from now. This was…”
May 7, 2026 positive
Srugo: Pylon founder Marty used FOMO-engineered intro blurbs from founders
“What Marty from Pylon had in his blurb was he had founders reach out to VCs and say something like, hey, have you met Pylon yet? I know Marty. He's a great founder. They're in YC now. If you haven't met them yet, let me know and I can try to get you in.”
Jun 1, 2026 bullish
Hughes: YC internal data proves staying in SF yields higher success rates
“When we graduated from Y Combinator on the last day, they just put up, like, all the data behind, like, companies who stay in SF and companies that leave SF. Even if you go to New York, like, it just, like, the chances of success are just so much higher if you…”
Jun 1, 2026 positive