The GoalThe overall goal of YC is to help startups really take off. They arrive at YC at all different stages. Some haven’t even started working yet, and others have been launched for a year or more. But whatever stage a startup is at when they arrive, our goal is to help them to be in dramatically better shape 3 months later.

For most startups, better shape translates into two things: to have a better product with more users, and to have more options for raising money.

Startups at all stages benefit from the intensity of YC. That’s probably the best word to describe the atmosphere. For 3 months, it’s all startup, all the time. Everyone around you—us, the other founders in your batch, the alumni, the speakers, the investors—wants to help your startup succeed. In that atmosphere it’s hard not to be highly motivated. And that kind of extraordinary motivation is what one needs to do something as difficult as starting a startup.

Many founders describe the 11 weeks leading up to Demo Day as the most productive period in their lives. Though YC continues after the 3 month cycle, and the alumni community is an increasingly valuable resource, those 11 weeks are still the most important thing. You can’t make people something they’re not, but the right conditions can bring out the best in them. And since most people have way more potential than they realize, they’re often surprised by what they’re capable of.

FundingYC invests $500,000 in every company on standard terms. Our $500K investment is made on 2 separate safes:

• We invest $125,000 on a post-money safe in return for 7% of your company (the “$125k safe”)
• We invest $375,000 on an uncapped safe with a Most Favored Nation (“MFN”) provision (the “MFN safe”)

GroupsDuring the batch, startups are sorted into 4 groups. Each group is led by group partners who advise the founders in one-on-one and group office hours. Each group is split into 12-14 sections (6-10 companies), so that founders get the benefit of an intimate setting within the larger batch.

Office HoursMuch of what takes place at YC happens during office hours. Group partners host group office hours every two weeks and one-on-one office hours as often as founders want. What startups talk about at office hours depends on the stage of the company and where they are in the YC cycle.

BookfaceBookface is the platform founders use to connect to one another—imagine a combination of Facebook, Quora, and LinkedIn. Each founder has a profile and can tag themselves as an expert in any topic. If you have a question, need an introduction, or want to poll for knowledge, you can post the request to the forum on Bookface. The knowledge base of the YC community is both broad and deep—the community includes founders who are the world’s foremost experts in everything from security to community building to nuclear energy.

Batch RetreatIn the first few weeks of the batch we host a 3-day, in-person retreat. The retreat gives founders the opportunity to get to know each other, their group partners, and the YC team.

Tuesday TalksOnce a week we invite an eminent person from the startup world to speak. Most speakers are successful startup founders — the founders of Airbnb, Stripe, Doordash and Ginkgo Bioworks often come back to tell the inside story of what happened in the early days of their startups. Talks are strictly off the record to encourage candor, because the inside story of most startups is more colorful than the one presented later to the public.

Public LaunchesOnce a startup has something built that’s ready to launch, we help founders figure out how to present it to users and the press. We prepare founders for launches on community sites like Product Hunt and Hacker News, and for their first press pitches and interviews.

First CustomersB2B and consumer companies often get their first 40-50 paying customers from the YC community. With that, you not only get first customers, you get the smartest early product feedback possible.

Weekly MeetupsThroughout the batch, we host weekly meetups in San Francisco. These events often feature special guests like the founders of YC and successful YC founders.

Demo DayOn Demo Day, the latest batch of Y Combinator-funded founders present their companies to an audience of specially selected investors and press. We doubt there’s another occasion when such a large percentage of the top startup investors have their attention focused on the same thing.

In the weeks following Demo Day we keep in close touch with the startups as they negotiate the fundraising maze, and help them decipher the real messages in investors’ sometimes deliberately ambiguous responses. Often we talk to the investors ourselves, to find out what they’re really thinking about a particular startup. Because YC-funded startups are a known quantity to investors and get introduced to enough of them to create serious price competition, companies tend to get higher valuations than they might otherwise.Click to Apply