Top YC companies
We help foundersmake something people want and the results speak for themselves.
We help founders at their earliest stages regardless of their age.
We improve the success rate of our startups.
We give startups a huge fundraising advantage.
Our companies have a track record of becoming billion dollar companies.
Our formula for success.
YC is run by startup founders who have built exactly what they wanted when starting and growing a startup.
The most experienced partners
Each founder is assigned a dedicated group partner who has mentored hundreds of YC companies. They have more data on what it takes to build a successful startup than any other early stage startup advisor. These group partners read applications, interview companies, and mentor startups throughout the batch. You can access them in person, over email, and on Slack.
Investor network
YC companies have raised $85 billion dollars from the best investors in the world. Our founders have access to the YC Investor Database which has profiles and reviews for more than 50,000 startup investors.
Private social network only for founders
YC founders get to benefit from the collective wisdom of over 9000 YC alumni. They can access these alums through Bookface, our private social network. We have a forum for asking questions to the community, a founder directory for finding specific people who can provide advice and intros, and a company directory for finding potential customers.
Exclusive deals
YC founders have access to over 1000 deals from leading software companies. Every YC company gets free credits or significant discounts on hosting, banking, cap table management, back office, and much more. Companies report these deals to be worth in excess of $500,000.
The best written advice
YC founders get to benefit from our collective experience funding 5000 companies across almost 20 years. We have extensive documentation for common questions about fundraising, go to market, sales, product market fit, mental health, hiring, and much more.
Networks to build your team
Through Work at a Startup and HN, we help our founders hire the small number of early engineers and other team members critical to finding product market fit. At any given time there are 150,000+ candidates searching for jobs at early stage YC companies.
We put founders' interests first.
We don’t take a board seat.
We don’t demand 20% of your company.
We don’t take weeks/months to decide to invest.
We don’t charge fees.
We don’t require decks, business plans, or MBAs.
We don't tell you what to do. We only offer advice.
Hear more from the community.
"Y Combinator is the best program for creating top-end entrepreneurs that has ever existed."
Marc Andreessen,
General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz
"Y Combinator is the best startup accelerator in the world. YC helps their companies a lot, and the YC community is a huge asset for the companies that go through the program."
Ron Conway,
Founder, SV Angel
"At YC, we were challenged to do things that don't scale – to start with the perfect experience for one person, then work backwards and scale it to 100 people who love us. This was the best piece of advice we've ever received."
Brian Chesky,
Founder, Airbnb (YC W09)
"I doubt that Stripe would have worked without YC. It's that simple. Acquiring early customers, figuring out who to hire, closing deals with banks, raising money – YC's partners were closely involved and crucially helpful."
Patrick Collison,
Founder, Stripe (YC S09)