The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 56 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Swyx: AI Agent Infrastructure Is What Developers Build When Lacking Ideas
“Like, the AI agent infrastructure company is what you do as a developer if you have no other ideas. So that, I mean, YC should take that as a warning sign that their people are not going after the right path.”
Tan: Albedo builds spy satellites superior to the US government
“Albedo is super hardcore because they basically have made spy satellites, but you know, they're better than what the U S government can do. And, you know, they might just replace replace that market for that.”
Tan: YC founder conference unlocked $10B–$100B in value
“I think that we brought together about 200 of all of our top founders. You know, there are about 60 or 70 unicorns represented. And I think that we unlocked, you know, easily 10 to a hundred billion dollars in new market cap like that very night”
Tan: YC alumni Axiom generated hundreds of millions in pure profits
“And hundreds of millions of dollars in pure profits.”
Tan: Startups will reach $100M ARR with 10 people in next few years
“Now, actually you can go from like zero to a hundred mil ARR with like 10 people. We're about to see that in the next few years. Like I think it's already been happening.”
Garry Tan says Initialized Capital would have failed if YC collapsed.
“I realized that actually if I stayed at initialized and didn't come back and heed the call of Paul and Jessica to write the ship at YC I would be out of a business. I, you know, I had initialized would have been out of business if YC itself was not going in th…”
Garry Tan: VCs hard-allocate over $1B yearly to Y Combinator companies
“The other thing is I have more than a billion dollars a year in capital that's basically just, like, hard allocated to YC companies, ah, not from us, from, like, you know, Hundreds of VCs who now are all coming back to Demo Day in droves.”
Y Combinator acts as a startup union that ostracizes bad venture capitalists
“YC has become essentially a union for startups. Because if you are a VC and you fuck over one YC company, you go in their database, every YC company hears about you, and instantly you're ostracized from the entire community”
Hays: Rage baiting causes potential investors and hires to root against startups
“Running a successful VC backed company requires you to build a coalition of people that want to see you win. Getting media investors, talent, and customers on your side is not an easy task. Rage baiting, whether at the marketing level or product level, is the …”
Tan: 18-to-22-year-old YC applicants and acceptances increased 110% year-over-year
“The wild stat that we're seeing is actually the number of 18 to 22 year olds applying to YC and getting is up a 110%. Year on year, right?”
Tan: Y Combinator is currently accepting startups at a 0.8% rate
“We're accepting companies at a 0.8% rate right now.”
Garry Tan: YC alum Axiom generates hundreds of millions in pure profit
“And they're doing hundreds of millions of dollars in pure profits.”
Garry Tan: Accepted 18-to-22-year-old YC applicants are up 110% year-over-year
“The wild stat that we're seeing is actually the number of 18 to 20 two-year-olds applying to YC and getting it is up a 110%. Year on year, right?”
Wischoff: Beyond OpenAI, Claude, and Perplexity, consumer AI lacks daily stickiness
“I don't know that I found anything even personally sticky enough that I'm like every day, like, you know, like messing around with it. And I, well, I guess it's not fair. Like obviously like open AI, like Claude and perplexity. But I think like on the everyday…”
Coogan: Standard YC playbook dilutes founders to single-digit equity
“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.”
Tan: 100% of YC companies currently have technical co-founders
“What's happening is that like, you know, a hundred percent of YC companies these days have technical co-founders”
Tan: Non-founders can run the founder mode playbook
“It turns out, you know, you don't have to be the founder to try to run the founder mode playbook.”
Garry Tan: About 90% of YC batch companies are AI startups
“You know, I think we're about 90% AI and you know, the age of intelligence is here.”
Hays: One-Person AI Rollup Lacks Edge Over Private Equity
“I would find it hard pressed to invest in the founder, unless it was like a personal relationship, because I don't know that you're going to have any edge over the many other Private equity firms that will all presumably follow the same strategy, right?”
Y Combinator's fixed deal terms allow them to buy at low valuations
“This is the bull case for Y Combinator right now because they have a set structure to their investments and you can't negotiate it. And so they've, they are able to buy into companies effectively artificially low because of their program and brand. And then ev…”
Hays: AI startups skip intermediate funding rounds by rapidly generating revenue
“We've seen this a lot with AI companies that Raise pre-product and then generate so much revenue and are making so much money so quickly with such a small team that by the time a next financing happens, the company's raising 20 on 200. And it's just really har…”
Y Combinator effectively functions as a labor union for startup founders
“This is why, I mean, this is why YC is like actually a very positive force in terms of, yeah, it's a union for founders.”
Hays: Corporate AI finance startups from YC compete directly with Ramp
“Every single new company coming out of YC that's doing some AI meets finance for corporations, you are competing directly with a very fast moving gorilla, which is ramp.”
Y Combinator Does Not Avoid Investing in Direct Competitors
“Why sees a mafia? Like they will crown a champion and then they will never do a deal in that space again. And it's kind of like the exact opposite. Totally not true.”
Hays: Y Combinator Found Wealthy Founders Have Higher Success Rates
“I think YC did an analysis on their portfolio
and they found that founders that came from money had a higher likelihood of success”
Coogan: Nvidia and YC-Backed Startup Plans Moon Hotel by 2032
“A new startup backed by Nvidia and Y Combinator is planning to develop the first hotel on the moon by 2032.”
Chesky: Almost all startups seen at Y Combinator are enterprise, not consumer
“In fact, I'm on the board of Y Combinator. Almost all the startups we are seeing are enterprise. There are not a lot of companies doing consumer.”
Tan: YC Spring 2025 batch is 90% AI, batch revenue growth hit 12%
“It's like 90% AI. It's about 10% 11% hard tech, which is awesome. And then the really crazy stat is, you know, how the last four batches, about the last year you know, the batch itself as a whole has been growing revenue by 10%. This time it's 12.”
Garry Tan: Y Combinator acceptance rate is down to 0.8 percent
“We're accepting companies at a 0.8% rate right now.”
Wishoff: More YC solo founders have revenue without hiring plans
“There are more solo founders that have revenue and customers with no plans, even with funding from this round.”
Wishoff: Current YC startups are targeting global markets from day one
“This is, like, the first batch maybe ever that I'm hearing from some growth investors where everyone from the start is international. Normally, it's, like, US market or. But everyone is starting off saying, like, we serve, we're global.”
Tisch: Y Combinator continues to compound founder satisfaction and justify its equity cost
“What has been amazing to me about YC is they've just continued to compound quality of the satisfaction to their customer. They are not free, right? You're giving YC equity. And yet if you look at like the happiness factor, the MPS or whatever cheesy acronym yo…”
Meservey: Going direct is now tech startups' default comms playbook
“Founders going direct is now part of the default playbook for comms. Like any YC company that's coming out into the world today, they're thinking the founder is going to go direct.”
Giffon: Senior execs at larger firms are untapped talent for running startups
“There's a lot of C-suite and senior executives at a business that's two or three times bigger than maybe the business you're looking at. And those are people who are like highly capable, has at least some entrepreneurial spirit, but maybe they're not, you know…”
Hays: Y Combinator Tells Early Founders Filing Patents Is a Waste
“This is the kind of stuff like founders will join YC. They never built a company before and they'll go into their first partner meeting, whatever. And they're like, yeah, we're filing our patents. For this. And YC will give you the good advice of being like, y…”
Coogan: Startups that cut burn immediately after YC warning survived
“The companies that cut their burn, like the same day that YC issued that letter saying, hey, this is going to be rough. They made it through just fine.”
Y Combinator's Requests for Startups catalyzes Big Tech employees to leave
“The one positive, the positive about the YC requests for startups is If you're working at a FANG, and you see that, and you're like, oh, that's interesting, and then you, that catalyze you, catalyzes you into starting a company, and then you start that company…”
Coogan: Ginkgo Bioworks went through YC at ~200M valuation
“Giggo Bioworks went through at like, two hundred million valuation.”
Coogan: Y Combinator is extremely supportive of founders pivoting mid-batch
“NYC has always been extremely friendly. Two pivots mid session. Like you can just walk into an office hours and be like, we're doing something completely different. And there's no like hate. It's amazing. It's like such a welcoming environment.”
Coogan: Six percent of Y Combinator startups become unicorns
“With six percent of YC startups already becoming unicorns, if Gupta can add the value that we think he can, there's no reason he can't add billions to YC's future returns.”
Coogan: Do not assume YC startups are already building viral ideas
“The next time you see some crazy banger and you think, oh, somebody already built it. There's probably 10, there's probably 10 YC companies that are doing this already. They aren't. Just go and build it.”
Early YC Batch Loyalty Gives Member Companies an Unfair B2B Distribution Moat
“One of YCs like moats is that if you could be in YC and you don't go in YC and then somebody that's competing for your, in your same category does there, the loyalty is like very real. Like they are going to use your competitor out of At least in the early day…”
Coogan: YC applications are intended to be unedited one-minute webcam videos
“You're supposed to just turn on the webcam and basically just talk for one minute. That's how you apply to YC. Yeah. You're supposed to just one shot at no editing because they don't want it to turn into, oh, to apply to YC, you spend two weeks doing an edited…”
Whatnot pitched Y Combinator as a Funko Pop marketplace without video
“Our initial pitch was basically A social commerce like marketplace for Funko Pops, which are like little vinyl dolls. And that was it. You can, that's what's in the YC application. And we didn't have any idea we were going to do video.”
Roughly 30 percent of YC startups pivot during the batch
“Something like 30% of the companies change their idea during the batch, and that's actually great.”
Garry Tan: YC Spring 2025 batch is 90% AI, 11% hard tech
“Dude, it's like 90% AI. It's about 10% 11% hard tech, which is awesome.”