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Y Combinator

We help founders make something people want.

YC General Partner David Lieb’s story is all about perseverance. In 2008 he co-founded Bump, one of the hottest startups of the early iPhone era. But even with 150 million users, he couldn’t find a way to create a sustainable business. For many founders, that would be the end of the road. But he didn’t quit there. Instead, David and his team pivoted several times, got acquired, and eventually went on to build Google Photos. 

In this episode of Backstory, he shares his advice for finding the right idea, what mistakes to avoid, and how to maintain a positive mindset no matter what gets thrown at you.

How David Lieb Turned A Failed Startup Into Google Photos | Backstory

Two-time founder Rujul Zaparde knows a thing or two about resilience and learning from failure. 

After dropping out of college to build FlightCar, he worked as a PM at Airbnb, and later as a visiting partner at YC. 

In 2020, he co-founded Zip, a procurement software company that has since raised $370 million and reached a $2.2 billion valuation. 

In this conversation with YC's Dalton Caldwell, Rujul demystifies the world of enterprise sales, shares his hard-earned lessons about scaling a business from zero, and explains how founders can use first-principles thinking to better approach the challenges of building a startup.

Building A $2 Billion SaaS Company: Lessons From A Two Time Founder

In this episode of How to Build the Future, Garry sits down with Parker Conrad, Co-founder & CEO of Rippling, the all-in-one HR, Finance, and IT software company that’s valued at $13.5 billion. 

Parker is the co-founder of two unicorns and has one of the more dramatic startup journeys in recent years. In this interview, he shares his origin story, the lessons learned from his first two companies, how AI is changing the game, and why he thinks the future will be defined by "compound" software startups.

How To Build The Future: Parker Conrad

AI continues to improve at an exponential pace. So what can you do as a founder to take advantage of it? 

In this episode of Office Hours, YC Partners discuss what you should consider if you’re thinking about pivoting to or incorporating AI as part of your startup.

How To Use AI In Your Startup

According to OpenAI's former Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew, reasoning and test-time compute will unlock more reliable and capable AI agents— and a path to scale to AGI.

In this episode of How to Build the Future, YC's @garrytan sits down with Bob to discuss the lessons learned from his time at OpenAI, scaling laws, his advice for startups, and what all of this means for the jobs of the future.

How To Build The AGI Future: Bob McGrew

Many startups fail because they run out of money. So how should you think about how to spend the money you raise?

In this episode of Office Hours, YC General Partners Brad Flora, Pete Koomen, Nicolas Dessaigne, and Gustaf Alströmer discuss how to spend responsibly at each stage of a startup— including advice on when to hire, whether to invest in marketing and what spending mistakes to avoid.

Apply to Y Combinator: https://ycombinator.com/apply

The Right (And Wrong) Way To Spend Money At Your Startup

Imagine flying from NY to London in just a few hours. That’s the future that Blake Scholl and his team at Boom Supersonic are working towards. 

Blake started as a software engineer and pivoted mid-career to aviation. Now, he’s at the forefront of trying to bring back supersonic travel for all of us. 

In this episode of Hard Tech, YC’s Jared Friedman visited Blake in the Mojave desert to find out how someone who didn’t have a background in aerospace engineering was able to build the first-ever independently developed supersonic plane.

Building A Supersonic Plane Company From The Ground Up

YC General Partner David Lieb sits down with Aravind Srinivas, the co-founder and CEO of Perplexity, to discuss his origins in Silicon Valley, what it's like to compete with Google, and what the future of search could look like.

Apply to Y Combinator: https://ycombinator.com/apply

How To Build The Future: Aravind Srinivas

Design isn’t just about making things work—it’s about how they work, says Dylan Field, the co-founder & CEO of Figma.
As AI transforms tech, he believes a designer's judgment, taste, and agency will matter more than ever.

Dylan sat down with YC's Garry Tan to discuss the evolving world of design in the age of AI, the challenging early days at Figma, and how his team forever changed the way designers and engineers collaborate.

The Future Of Design With Figma's Dylan Field

Gusto (https://gusto.com) made payroll and HR painless for small businesses, growing into a $9.6B company along the way. 

Co-founder & CEO Josh Reeves joined YC's Harj Taggar to share how they built a payroll company from scratch and their customer-first approach to product design and culture.

Customer Obsession Made Gusto A $9.6 Billion Company

Rana Adhikari is a Professor of Physics at Caltech and a member of the LIGO team, who were the first to measure gravitational waves.

Their detection papers are available here.

#35 - The Technical Challenges of Measuring Gravitational Waves - Rana Adhikari of LIGO

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