iPhone, every mention

76 scenes, the whole family · ← back to iPhone

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every year anyone Sam Altman 24Craig Cannon 15Michael Seibel 9David Lieb 7Brian Donohue 6Leah Culver 5Garry Tan 5Diana Hu 4Ryan Petersen 3Ryan Hoover 3

Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where iPhone comes up

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Blake Scholl: Breaking the Supersonic Ban · Y Combinator Jul 28, 2026 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 11:59 Blake Scholl And the first supersonic air-to-air livestream, filmed on an iPhone, streamed via Starlink, and of course, most importantly, legalizing supersonic flight in the U.S.

Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup" · Y Combinator Jul 28, 2026 · 1 mention

Zynga Founder: Consumer Is Not Investible Right Now - Thats Why You Should Build It · Y Combinator Jun 25, 2026 · 2 mentions

  • ▶ 38:15 Garry Tan You know, that's like one of the classic ways to come up with startup ideas is like you take any like log graph of like a cost curve or like some capability curve, like you could have guessed the moment that the iPhone could have been… 2 times in the scene

Inside YC's AI Playbook · Y Combinator May 27, 2026 · 1 mention

The Powerful Alternative To Fine-Tuning · Y Combinator Feb 27, 2026 · 2 mentions

  • ▶ 0:09 Ian Fisher Last summer, I took a weekend and used, um, GPT-V to help me build an iPhone app.
  • ▶ 18:51 Ian Fisher Um, uh, even, even for me, you know, last summer I took a weekend and used, um, GPT-V to help me build an iPhone app.

OpenClaw Creator: Why 80% Of Apps Will Disappear · Y Combinator Feb 7, 2026 · 1 mention

Inside The Startup Building Reusable Rockets · Y Combinator Jan 8, 2026 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 0:27 Tom Feldman I think if you have something that can go up and come back to the place where you want it to go, when you want it to go, I think it is like the iPhone app store moment.

Aaron Levie: Why Startups Win In The AI Era · Y Combinator Sep 16, 2025 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 1:49 Aaron Levie We started the company in 2005, and this was a, this was a time where you have to kind of, you know, literally go back 20 years and think about a world where the internet was much slower, browsers were way worse, we didn't have the iPhone,…

Cursor CEO: Going Beyond Code, Superintelligent AI Agents, And Why Taste Still Matters · Y Combinator Jun 11, 2025 · 2 mentions

  • ▶ 36:28 Michael Truell The thing there was getting the iPod moment right and then the iPhone moment right. 2 times in the scene

How David Lieb Turned a Failing Startup Into Google Photos | Backstory · Y Combinator Dec 18, 2024 · 4 mentions

  • ▶ 2:15 David Lieb And the iPhone had just come out, and we were all trying to get each other's phone numbers so we could text each other to, like, meet up, and one day I typed in, like, 10 people's phone numbers and asked them to spell their last name, and…
  • ▶ 10:13 David Lieb But as we got thinking about it, we realized, you know, the, the Photos app on the iPhone isn't that good. 3 times in the scene

Twitter vs. X: Product Lessons For Startup Founders · Y Combinator Nov 21, 2024 · 3 mentions

  • ▶ 15:59 David Lieb A decade, um, and Apple just copied it, um, so 14 years later, now you can hold your two iPhones together, and people literally call it bumping.
  • ▶ 22:00 David Lieb Yeah, when you're saying that, I'm thinking of Steve Jobs in building the iPhone and making decisions on what they were going to do in the iPhone and what things they were explicitly not going to do. 2 times in the scene

How To Build The Future: Sam Altman · Y Combinator Nov 8, 2024 · 2 mentions

  • ▶ 29:28 Sam Altman It was, like, you know, still three years or two years before the iPhone. 2 times in the scene

How To Find A Co-Founder | Startup School · Y Combinator Sep 27, 2024 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 7:54 Harj Taggar It doesn't matter if they can only program in a certain language or if they've only got experience building iPhone applications versus web applications.

How Nothing Founder Carl Pei Built A Multi-Million Dollar Smartphone Brand In Just 2 Years · Y Combinator Aug 13, 2024 · 5 mentions

  • ▶ 0:51 Carl Pei I think I was probably one of the first people in Sweden to have the iPod, and, uh, I was definitely the first among my friends to get the iPhone, and back then the iPhone was a U.S. exclusive with AT&T, and I had to get a U.S. friend to… 2 times in the scene
  • ▶ 1:11 Garry Tan How old were you when you first held the iPhone one? 2 times in the scene
  • ▶ 8:33 Carl Pei And they make iPhones as well, so they're very happy with their Apple relationship, and there was a period of time where they took on a lot of risk with working with startups, but when it came our turn, that wasn't the case anymore.

AI and the Future of Law: The 10 Year "Overnight" Success Story · Y Combinator Nov 15, 2023 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 2:06 Jake Heller And I would then like go on my iPhone and look for like takeout Thai food or something, and that was insanely easy.

Tips For Technical Startup Founders | Startup School · Y Combinator Apr 21, 2023 · 1 mention

How To Change The World? Get The Small Things Right – Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel · Y Combinator Feb 2, 2022 · 2 mentions

Laks Srini on Making Homeownership in Reach with ZeroDown · Y Combinator Dec 11, 2019 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 31:30 Laks Srini If I gave you an iPhone and said, like, you can't install any software in this, you can't, like, put a cover on it, like, then it's not your phone.

Matt Cutts on the US Digital Service and Working at Google for 17 Years · Y Combinator Dec 4, 2019 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 54:51 Matt Cutts You know, with the latest version of the iPhone and with the latest version of Android, like, the pendulum's starting to swing the other way, like digital well-being, those sort of features, I, I think that's super cool.

Diana Hu on Augmented Reality and Building a Startup in a New Market · Y Combinator Aug 28, 2019 · 2 mentions

  • ▶ 11:01 Diana Hu So what that means, which is, if you really look at the numbers, the, which, uh, last time I looked at it, the iPhone seven beats an all benchmark for CPU and power and, sorry, for CPU loads or GPU loads, where you compute something, as… 2 times in the scene

Gustaf Alströmer - Growth for Startups · Y Combinator Aug 15, 2019 · 1 mention

Marques Brownlee on Building an Audience and Other Advice for Creators · Y Combinator Mar 21, 2019 · 7 mentions

  • ▶ 5:41 Craig Cannon Like, just that actual feel, like when you sit, when you touch an iPhone for the first time.
  • ▶ 8:15 Craig Cannon You're like, oh man, you know, iPhone X or whatever, like, this is awesome.
  • ▶ 9:29 Craig Cannon I mean, I know a lot of people are holding on to, you know, iPhone basically five form factor.
  • ▶ 9:41 Marques Brownlee To peak smartphone, because your iPhone, if you buy an iPhone XS now, that phone's probably gonna be good for, like, four years.
  • ▶ 9:41 Marques Brownlee To peak smartphone, because your iPhone, if you buy an iPhone XS now, that phone's probably gonna be good for, like, four years.
  • ▶ 11:09 Craig Cannon Like, I remember people wouldn't shut up about their iPhones when they got them, and the same thing is true for 2 times in the scene

Ryan Hoover on Product Hunt's Acquisition and Lessons Learned About Launches with Dalton Caldwell · Y Combinator Feb 15, 2019 · 2 mentions

  • ▶ 30:14 Ryan Hoover This is also really big, you know, focusing entirely just on technology, because who doesn't have an iPhone, first off, or like an Android phone?
  • ▶ 36:31 Ryan Hoover And it could be something like I, I switched from Android to iPhone.

Frank Lantz - Director of NYU's Game Center and Creator of Universal Paperclips · Y Combinator Dec 20, 2018 · 1 mention

Brian Donohue on Operating Instapaper Through an Acquisition · Y Combinator Nov 14, 2018 · 6 mentions

  • ▶ 2:08 Brian Donohue The first one was, um, if you remember early iPhone days, the early mobile networks were really slow and it was like impossible to load a website. 4 times in the scene
  • ▶ 7:56 Brian Donohue Now, Instant Paper had no Android application, and the iPhone app was three dollars and 99 cents to download.
  • ▶ 34:56 Brian Donohue I mean, basically from late 2014 through now, I've been the person doing all the back-end engineering, all the iPhone engineering.

A Conversation on Hard Tech with Eric Migicovsky · Y Combinator Oct 12, 2018 · 1 mention

Startup Technology - Technical Founder Advice · Y Combinator Oct 10, 2018 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 15:54 Diana Hu There's AR with markers, and that never really took off, and then we thought about why don't we bring these algorithms and run them on the phones, and we got to the point where we thought we could do it, because the computation at that…

A Conversation with Ooshma Garg - Moderated by Adora Cheung · Y Combinator Sep 8, 2018 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 23:30 Ooshma Garg So if you want to change the world or change your industry, you have to do something that is like materially better, like iPhone level better than the market.

David Rusenko - How To Find Product Market Fit · Y Combinator Sep 5, 2018 · 3 mentions

Michael Seibel - Building Product · Y Combinator Sep 5, 2018 · 9 mentions

  • ▶ 20:30 Michael Seibel And the other day, he had to figure out how to get, make a phone that millions of people would buy. 2 times in the scene
  • ▶ 46:30 Michael Seibel And what's funny is that I think oftentimes people look at the iPhone as a perfect example of this, but they look at their iPhone today 7 times in the scene

Ryan Petersen on Building Flexport, a Modern Freight Forwarder · Y Combinator Aug 30, 2018 · 3 mentions

  • ▶ 4:18 Ryan Petersen I'm like, if only I would have invented the iPhone, I could be rich with the scooter business I had.
  • ▶ 17:16 Ryan Petersen And we got Foxconn signed up, makes, makes the iPhone, Cargill signed up like one of the biggest ad companies in the world.
  • ▶ 37:59 Ryan Petersen And they're willing to, you know, if you make 600 bucks on an iPhone, I think their margin, I've seen the breakdowns, they make like 400 bucks or something according to that iSupply company.

Sam Altman - How to Succeed with a Startup · Y Combinator Aug 29, 2018 · 8 mentions

Jessica Brillhart, Immersive Director, on VR and AR · Y Combinator Aug 16, 2018 · 1 mention

Elad Gil Shares Advice from the High Growth Handbook, a Guide to Scaling Startups · Y Combinator Jul 27, 2018 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 28:57 Elad Gil Upswing in the 2000 of, oh, look, tech is so great, and there's the iPhone and all these other things, and look at how Google's helping people, and now we're in sort of the, oh my gosh, tech is only bad, and my hope is that we come back…

Simon Benjamin on Architectures for Quantum Computing · Y Combinator May 25, 2018 · 2 mentions

  • ▶ 43:58 Simon Benjamin I could write an app for my iPhone that would simulate a quantum computer that has perhaps 15 qubits pretty easily.
  • ▶ 49:04 Simon Benjamin Because otherwise, the thing I like to say is it's a bit like showing an iPhone to a guy from 1965, right?

Helping Landlords Find Tenants – Sean Mitchell of Rezi · Y Combinator May 4, 2018 · 1 mention

Gaming Studio Founders - Patrick Moberg and Holly Liu · Y Combinator Apr 27, 2018 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 40:43 Craig Cannon Like most people don't care about like how the internet ends up on my iPhone, let alone how my iPhone works.

Cost vs Quality in Edtech – Keith Schacht, Avichal Garg, and Geoff Ralston · Y Combinator Apr 6, 2018 · 2 mentions

  • ▶ 26:48 Avichal Garg The iPhone kind of worked that way.
  • ▶ 52:26 Avichal Garg Like the iPhone or Android or iPad, Chromebook, um, that sort of allow people to interact with information in novel and new and interesting ways.

Sam Altman - Startup Investor School Day 1 · Y Combinator Mar 6, 2018 · 2 mentions

  • ▶ 26:30 Sam Altman So, when the iPhone came out, um, most of the mobile industry would make fun of it because Apple only sold a million or two million, whatever it was in the first year. 2 times in the scene

Uncut Interview with Sam Altman on Masters of Scale [Audio] · Y Combinator Feb 23, 2018 · 4 mentions

  • ▶ 6:14 Sam Altman So one of the things that was obvious when people got iPhones, even though like, you know, there were only a few million of the first iPhones that sold them, there's people that had them use them every day. 4 times in the scene

Leah Culver of Breaker and Tom Sparks of YC Answer Your Questions About Security and Podcasting · Y Combinator Jan 5, 2018 · 6 mentions

  • ▶ 3:52 Leah Culver I'm actually, so I have an iPhone and I'm, I have some little paranoia things. 2 times in the scene
  • ▶ 3:57 Leah Culver So if I was like panicked, so, so I do, I actually just got the iPhone X.
  • ▶ 10:39 Leah Culver The device one's a huge pain in the ass because every time I get a new iPhone, I spend the next like hour switching over all my authenticator keys. 2 times in the scene
  • ▶ 10:52 Craig Cannon Faking out the iPhone X.

Microbes, Robots, and Ambition - Robin Sloan on His Novel Sourdough · Y Combinator Nov 29, 2017 · 3 mentions

  • ▶ 23:22 Robin Sloan Um, I mean, because I kind of, I admired the iPhone screen, in particular, the, like, lack of, of row of browser tabs across the top, or, like, other windows tiled in the background, you know? 3 times in the scene

Casey Neistat and Matt Hackett on Live Video's Struggle for Interestingness · Y Combinator Nov 1, 2017 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 17:11 Casey Neistat To me, it's reminiscent of like the stories of Steve Jobs's first demo for the iPhone, where if he didn't follow this specific path through the product demo, the entire OS would collapse.

Communicate with Users, Build Something They Want - Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt · Y Combinator Oct 4, 2017 · 2 mentions

Don't Start a Blog, Start a Cult - Mr. Money Mustache · Y Combinator Sep 27, 2017 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 1:14 Mr. Money Mustache Um, and that's true with like, whether you're the cult of Star Trek or iPhone or the various religions, they all have these sort of special terminology.

Ex Machina's Scientific Advisor - Murray Shanahan · Y Combinator Jun 28, 2017 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 7:55 Craig Cannon And he also said that, um, um, maybe, maybe accurately that you're the, any iPhone

Scaling Growth | Gustaf Alstromer, YC Partner (formerly Airbnb) & Ed Baker (formerly Uber) · Y Combinator Jun 23, 2017 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 13:53 Ed Baker Um, with Uber there are steps of that funnel where it involves, you know, a driver going in and getting their vehicle inspected, or, um, uploading their documents, and, um, ultimately downloading their iPhone app, going into their car, and…

At the Intersection of AI, Governments, and Google - Tim Hwang · Y Combinator Jun 16, 2017 · 4 mentions

  • ▶ 32:02 Craig Cannon Yeah, I mean, uh, my, uh, I, I cracked my iPhone, uh, earlier, and, um, was getting it fixed this morning, and the guy had an entire box of assorted iPhone screws from, from literally, like, an iPhone, you know, iPhone one, uh, to an… 4 times in the scene

The Technical Advisor for Silicon Valley on HBO: Ed McManus · Y Combinator May 17, 2017 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 0:17 Ed McManus Both were marketplaces for iPhone, so similar to Craigslist for iPhone.

Office Hours with Sam Altman · Y Combinator Jan 11, 2017 · 6 mentions

  • ▶ 20:14 Sam Altman And then after the iPhone in 2007, maybe from 2007 to 2011, we had another rise of the mobile first companies. 6 times in the scene

Office Hours at Startup School 2013 with Paul Graham and Sam Altman · Y Combinator Oct 26, 2013 · 2 mentions

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