Y Combinator, every mention
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Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Y Combinator comes up
TBPN Year in Review
- ▶ 2:44 John Coogan Gary Tan hooked us up with, uh, the ability to stream from YC Demo Day, the Palace of Party Rounds.
Amazon Bets $10B on OpenAI | News Reaction
- ▶ 21:37 unnamed speaker Most of what is new is just YC slop startups. 2 times in the scene
Paramount Strikes Back, Ads In Gemini, Bieber’s Apple Beef | Diet TBPN
- ▶ 5:59 unnamed speaker Is that a YC startup? 5 times in the scene
Netflix Acquires Warner Brothers, Apple’s Leadership Shakeup, SpaceX Prepares For IPO | Diet TBPN
- ▶ 20:09 unnamed speaker Uh, and that's certainly lower than YC. 3 times in the scene
Will AWS Buy Google’s TPUs, Remembering Claude The Gator, Ricursive Raises $35M | Diet TBPN
- ▶ 8:04 unnamed speaker But if the next generation of companies, I'm sure we'll talk to some of the AI focused YC Demo Day companies today about this.
- ▶ 15:48 unnamed speaker Power users called crunched at 1250 YC company in the context of when news AGI arrived when super intelligence arrived.
- ▶ 22:20 unnamed speaker Uh, they try to say, like, uh, YC is a circular economy, uh, but you have to ignore the, the hundreds of, you know, very real businesses that have, you know, been, been created, uh, through YC and, uh, gone on to work with every kind of… 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 26:53 unnamed speaker And apply to Y Combinator.
Wednesday’s Diet TBPN
- ▶ 2:16 Jordi Hays Uh, but yesterday YC announced Chad IDE, AKA the brain rot code editor. 6 times in the scene
- ▶ 8:33 Jordi Hays You know, one of YC's challenges as an institution 6 times in the scene
- ▶ 10:51 Jordi Hays But the reason, the reason I included this is because I think there's a lot of people like Sharav and tons of young people that look to YC as whatever YC is promoting, they approve. 6 times in the scene
How to Build an $11B Empire Selling Funko Pops | Whatnot CEO Grant Lafontaine Joins TBPN
- ▶ 3:26 unnamed speaker At the last YC batch, we were asking every founder that we interviewed, like, how they started their first, what their first business was, and a lot was, like, somewhat collectibles.
- ▶ 4:30 unnamed speaker Pitch deck, or the first, uh, did you go through YC? 4 times in the scene
- ▶ 24:51 unnamed speaker Did you go to YC up in the bay? 2 times in the scene
Google's First $100B Quarter Reactions | Diet TBPN
- ▶ 1:28 unnamed speaker You know, a strange, strange comp here is YC, I don't know, it's some years ago at this point, was trying to understand what, what, uh, the factors that contributed to the breakout successes.
Sequoia Capital Partner Shaun Maguire Live on TBPN
- ▶ 17:15 Shaun Maguire They did YC, but you know, we invested 600,000 dollars, like a three million dollar valuation, and they went through some incredibly hard times.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Live on TBPN
- ▶ 1:00 Satya Nadella I've known Sam for a long time, um, since his first company pre-IC days.
Brian Chesky Live on TBPN
- ▶ 1:23 unnamed speaker They were doing YC.
- ▶ 19:19 Brian Chesky In fact, I'm on the board of Y Combinator.
OpenAI Drops A Web Browser? Our Reactions | Diet TBPN
- ▶ 10:24 Jordi Hays I met in YC.
How Josh Kushner Became The Most Powerful VC in New York
- ▶ 19:28 unnamed speaker I was looking at the team and I was like, if you just make the bet on like, you have the CTO of Stripe, Greg Brockman, you have the former president of Y Combinator, just the resume of the founding team at that time.
Alexis Ohanian on TikTok's Frozen Innovation, Gaming Reddit & Sports vs AI
- ▶ 10:01 Alexis Ohanian I actually remember getting Wait, you got 12 K from YC. you 2 times in the scene
Mark Zuckerberg, James Cameron, Andrew Yang and More - TBPN Top 5
- ▶ 9:03 John Coogan Uh, we were talking, we were at YC Demo Day a few weeks ago and we were talking to a team that like, they're like, well, this AI agent will run on your laptop and it'll suck in all your messages.
- ▶ 21:12 Jordi Hays We were at YC Demo Day last week and talking and looking at the eras of the sneaker flippers, the people doing Minecraft servers, and it feels like the people today are going to be leveraging the tools, not just to learn them, but actually…
Weekly Recap: Apple Debuts iPhone 17, Einstein of Wall Street, YC Demo Day, Declining AI Adoption
Weekly Recap: Taylor Swift Gets Engaged, SpaceX Launches Falcon 9, Dr. Drew
- ▶ 13:11 John Coogan Looks like a YC demo day.
Weekly Recap: Sam vs. Elon, Cluely's Crazy Ad, UFC x Paramount, Apple's AI Robot
- ▶ 1:44:24 Jordi Hays And there is a YC, there is a Varda-esque YC company. 2 times in the scene
Weekly Recap: Apple Sitting on $100B, Disney Enters The AI Race, Marc Andreessen, All About GPT-5
- ▶ 1:45:00 John Coogan Then he got drafted by Y Combinator before joining OpenAI as CFO in 2018. 2 times in the scene
The State Of AI in 15 Minutes
- ▶ 3:51 unnamed speaker Then he got drafted by Y Combinator before joining OpenAI as CFO in 2018.
- ▶ 6:12 unnamed speaker They usually try and sit back, let the model speak for themselves, let the API credits work their way through the latest YC Demo Day batch, and get the product into the hands of people.
Weekly Recap: Casey Neistat, OpenAI Cracks Math, The Future of ChatGPT, Apple x F1, Intel Layoffs
- ▶ 45:24 Jordi Hays Except, except last time when we had confetti cannons at YC Demo Day, my eyes were in pain for days and days and days.
- ▶ 1:12:44 John Coogan It's a good call for like a YC company. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 1:15:17 Jordi Hays There's a, there's a, there's a, there's a YC company called Dell as well.
The Future of ChatGPT
- ▶ 18:47 unnamed speaker Except, except last time when we had confetti cannons at YC Demo Day, my eyes were in pain for days and days and days.
Weekly Recap: CEO Affair at Coldplay Concert, Elon Musk's AI Girlfriend, Cognition Acquires Windsurf
- ▶ 54:06 John Coogan Like there's probably a ton of YC teams. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 1:06:57 John Coogan And some of those, some of those folks have been banned from YC demo day.
Weekly Recap: The Soham Parekh Drama, Meta Attacks OpenAI, Trump's Mega Bill
- ▶ 0:48 John Coogan Obviously a joke, but he's been on the timeline all day because apparently he's been working at multiple YC companies, multiple companies at the same time. 4 times in the scene
- ▶ 3:11:29 John Coogan This is, this is an incredible series, the startup school series that Sam did while he was at YC.
We Interviewed the Best Startups From YC Demo Day (June 2025)
- ▶ 0:06 unnamed speaker It's YC Demo Day. 10 times in the scene
- ▶ 13:36 Garry Tan You know, what I need is, I need YC to continue to provide returns, right? 4 times in the scene
- ▶ 16:11 unnamed speaker Do YC. 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 30:08 unnamed speaker But, uh, when you went through YC or if you're here, uh, you know, there's a big theme of talk to your customers.
- ▶ 36:03 unnamed speaker Did you bring it into YC or did you pivot to this at some point? 2 times in the scene
Weekly Recap: Apple WWDC, Andrew Huberman, YC Demo Day, Intern Phone Assembly, $14B Meta x Scale
- ▶ 1:33 John Coogan Uh, we also went to Y Combinator demo day, 20, 25. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 1:48:46 John Coogan It's YC Demo Day. 10 times in the scene
- ▶ 2:02:10 Garry Tan You know, what I need is, I need YC to continue to provide returns, right? 6 times in the scene
- ▶ 2:04:46 John Coogan Do YC. 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 2:24:37 unnamed speaker Did you bring it into YC, or did you pivot to this at some point? 2 times in the scene
Coinbase CEO Explains the Future of Crypto
- ▶ 8:45 Brian Armstrong Cause you know, you want to have two, two, three, four people like working on it, kind of like a YC company, not like
Weekend Special: Elon Recap, Balaji, Chris Dixon, Brian Armstrong, Crypto Day + Thiel Fellows
- ▶ 1:06:04 John Coogan I mean, we were kind of in the same YC batch. 5 times in the scene
- ▶ 1:17:05 Brian Armstrong Kind of like a YC company, not like don't put a hundred people on it or something.
We Went to DC to Interview Tech's Power Players
- ▶ 11:55 Delian Asparouhov I'm glad after I saw you guys' YC thing, I just, like, texted Cougan afterwards, and I was like, yo, this at Hill and Valley, it's gonna be sick.
We Interviewed the Best Startups From YC Demo Day
- ▶ 0:04 John Coogan It's YC Demo Day, everyone.
- ▶ 1:08 John Coogan Cause I mean, the YC ethos is like, just don't die. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 4:41 unnamed speaker Prior to YC, this summer, I quit my job at Goldman Sachs. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 7:30 Jason Carman My hope is that in 10 years, there are more hopefully YC companies that start around these next few years that are providing services for other. 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 15:26 Nichole Wischoff I mean, YC would say, and they have, they've always backed some, but not like a bunch. 5 times in the scene
- ▶ 17:43 John Coogan Welcome to Demo Day.
- ▶ 20:11 unnamed speaker It was outbound historically, but after getting to YC, we went viral because Gary Tan retweets every time I tweet on Twitter. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 20:53 Jackson Stokes So before doing YC, I was actually at Google, uh, working on the Gemini models. 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 24:58 John Coogan YC Demo Day stream from the Palace of Party Rounds, the Fortress of Finance, the Capital of Capital.
Willem Van Lancker on Terrain’s Radical New Founder Program
- ▶ 1:38 unnamed speaker They can go do YC, especially if they're, if they have a good track record.
- ▶ 7:30 unnamed speaker I mean, yeah, but one of the best benefits of YC is just like the competition of like seeing everyone around you, the pressure and having a deadline.
- ▶ 9:26 Willem Van Lancker Like the YC approach is like have a loose idea, iterate quickly, talk to a lot of customers and that clearly works.
Why Patience Is the Secret to Building Iconic Companies | Mike Vernal on TBPN
- ▶ 2:22 unnamed speaker It's a fascinating story because it was a YC company
Building Durable Brands in Venture Capital | David Tisch on TBPN
- ▶ 6:00 John Coogan I mean, they were public at the time, but they were, I still think of them as like a YC company, right?
- ▶ 23:32 John Coogan There's a, it feels like there's a lot new, a lot more products like YC is bigger than ever, but then there's also Z Fellows, there's different fellowships. 6 times in the scene
Building Durable Funds in the Post-Boom Era | Nichole Wischoff on TBPN
- ▶ 15:20 Nichole Wischoff Some of the YC companies I've seen have been super interesting, but I haven't really found longevity for my, myself using them as like a, you know, personally.
Fighting AI Fraud and the Future of Verification | Ryan Sandler & Daniel Yanisse on TBPN
- ▶ 12:56 Daniel Yanisse And we're, we're both part of Y Combinator. 4 times in the scene
Are AI AGENTS Learning to DREAM? | Shawn Wang on TBPN April 4th
- ▶ 8:45 unnamed speaker Y Combinator demo day, and there was a lot of, uh, AI agent infrastructure companies. 2 times in the scene
Is AI UNDERVALUED? | Scott Wu on TBPN April 3rd
Lulu Cheng Meservey on Founder Mode, Attention as Currency, and Building the Future.
- ▶ 6:15 Lulu Cheng Meservey Like any YC company that's coming out into the world today, they're thinking the founder is going to go direct.
- ▶ 22:46 John Coogan We, we're pretty big in the private markets for tech, but moving our, our, we, we like to think of it as like, YC Demo Day was our NFL combine, uh, earnings season is our Superbowl.
Shaun Maguire breaks down Wiz investment, building great teams, and the Everything App.
- ▶ 11:19 unnamed speaker Is that, is that class like YC where the, if you enter into it, you're kind of doing it for 12 hours a day type of thing?
Investing in the Future and the Importance of Science Fiction
- ▶ 4:42 Jordi Hays You know, people have talked recently about how the, the, you know, YC batches, everything feels very on trend, right? 4 times in the scene
David Senra on Nvidia, Jensen Huang, and Being a Great Founder.
- ▶ 14:45 John Coogan It's just so like the, the standard YC playbook, for example, is like you get three co-founders, you split it equally, then immediately YC takes 10%, then it's like back to back to back 20% rounds, you're diluted down to a few percent. 2 times in the scene
"I Partner with People" - Chad Byers talks about Venture, Fitness, and Being a Chad.
- ▶ 13:54 Chad Byers YC demo day.
- ▶ 20:19 unnamed speaker We, we were at YC demo day and we saw a couple teams come through where it was just, 2 times in the scene
Trae Stephens talks Flock Safety, Anduril, and American Dynamism.
- ▶ 1:13 unnamed speaker Do you remember if they were a hot company when they were coming out of YC, was it obvious that they were onto something onto something and, and special? 4 times in the scene
- ▶ 2:21 Trae Stephens But honestly, let's take a moment to just like applaud Gary Tan for what he's done with Y Combinator. 4 times in the scene
Delian Asparouhov on Near Death Experiences, Deflecting Asteroids, and the Magic of Venture.
- ▶ 26:23 Delian Asparouhov Um, uh, it's actually in the latest white combinator batch, um, props to them.
Michael Mignano on Building Anchor, Social Podcasting, and the Future of Oboe.
- ▶ 19:24 Michael Mignano And by the way, that's what we see, like, you know, in places like YC, these companies pivot sometimes like five times over the course of two weeks, the pivot is so important.
Alexis Ohanian reflects on Reddit, the changing internet, and the future of Digg.
- ▶ 3:10 Alexis Ohanian Remember, you know, we were in the first batch Y Combinator, which was in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
"There's a lot of stuck founders out there" - Jeremy Giffon breaks down the current state of VC.
- ▶ 10:12 Jeremy Giffon And there's actually a lot of talent there that can be unlocked who are people who, you know, can't do the go through YC thing, but still, you know, would love to have real upside, would love to, to, uh, to, to lead a team and run a…
- ▶ 18:36 Jeremy Giffon You don't gotta like go to Harvard and do YC and all that.
Garry Tan talks the state of YC, the impact of AI, and the dawn of innovation.
- ▶ 0:17 unnamed speaker Uh, but it seems like YC is like completely transformed by LLM's writing code. 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 3:17 unnamed speaker You know, YC has always been about, you have three months to make a tremendous amount of progress. 5 times in the scene
- ▶ 5:55 unnamed speaker Uh, we've had this thesis that YC is, like, entering like a renaissance, like with the AI stuff, like this is the best time to be running like the YC business model, but can you talk a little bit about 6 times in the scene
- ▶ 10:25 unnamed speaker What do you say to people that want to put YC in a box, right? 7 times in the scene
- ▶ 13:45 unnamed speaker Do the YC model. 5 times in the scene
- ▶ 17:15 Garry Tan I mean, I get hit up for, um, you know, I was thinking about how Sam Altman, when he, uh, had my role here at YC, uh, he used to have, like, 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 18:46 unnamed speaker You put out a, uh, you know, YC's, you know, um, famous for your request for startups list, uh, wanted to highlight one specifically that you had, uh, called out, which was a secure AI app store.
- ▶ 20:19 unnamed speaker Uh, it's always a pleasure chatting and, uh, hopefully we'll see you at YC demo day.
Billionaires Quest to Save Farming
- ▶ 17:04 unnamed speaker I would, I just wish these guys would instead go and give, you know, money through like a YC model almost, and just get the money into a bunch of young hackers, let them build a bunch of stuff.
How Does GROK Compare? (Full Analysis)
- ▶ 10:26 unnamed speaker Sam had an accelerator, a small accelerator called Y Combinator.
- ▶ 51:50 John Coogan It wasn't, it was Y Combinator had a, uh, a series of interviews on their YouTube channel, and Sam went and conducted a number of interviews, and one of them was with Elon, and so they're sitting in the Tesla factory, just chopping it up… 4 times in the scene
- ▶ 1:03:53 John Coogan Uh, Altman had known him since his Y Combinator days.
Elizabeth Holmes First Interview Released
- ▶ 28:34 unnamed speaker We're in, you know, white comedy or loosely, like we're in the Silicon Valley area.
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