Y Combinator
About this creator
Y Combinator publishes practical startup guidance on product building, fundraising, founder decision-making, and scaling high-growth technology companies.
Why they're in the library
Included for practical education on practical startup guidance on product building, fundraising, founder decision-making, and scaling high-growth technology companies.
Showing 320 digests for Y Combinator.
Customer discovery
YouTube
What founders learn by genuinely caring about their customers
Y Combinator
April 28, 2023
Customer discovery
9
Case studies
6
Caring about customers unlocks insights no survey or report can
Airbnb's notebook goldmine came from accepting a coffee invitation
Twitch's pivot began with the CEO calling streamers one by one
MVP & prototyping
YouTube
How to build and ship fast as a technical founder
Y Combinator
April 21, 2023
MVP & prototyping
10
Product-market fit
8
Pivoting
5
Ship a working prototype in days, not weeks — demos beat explanations.
The 90/10 solution: restrict scope ruthlessly, launch fast, rewrite later.
Your coding time drops below 50% once the team hits five engineers.
Identity & self-belief
YouTube
How to prepare yourself for a startup career as a student
Y Combinator
April 14, 2023
Identity & self-belief
8
Resilience & grit
7
Productivity & habits
5
Learn to code now — coders hold the real power inside startups
Ship low-stakes projects early to build the founder muscle
True ambition means patience; startups take 7–10 years
How startup fundraising actually works: seven myths debunked
Y Combinator
March 29, 2023
Fundraising & VC
9
Pivoting
5
Fundraising is coffee chats and Zoom calls, not Shark Tank pitches.
SAFEs let founders raise millions in days with no lawyers or lost control.
Rejection is universal — Whatnot raised less than hoped, then hit $3.7B.
Customer experience
YouTube
Caring about your customers is a startup competitive advantage
Y Combinator
March 3, 2023
Customer experience
9
Competitive analysis
6
Founders who genuinely care about customers consistently beat better-funded rivals
Talking directly to users is a superpower big companies literally cannot replicate
Copying big-company sales tactics from day one throws away your only real edge
AI strategy & adoption
YouTube
How large language models work and what they mean for developers
Y Combinator
February 28, 2023
AI strategy & adoption
9
AI tools & automation
7
Product-market fit
5
A fine-tuning exercise, not raw capability, made ChatGPT go viral
Senior developers benefit most from AI code completion — counterintuitively
Developers may be the first profession significantly automated by AGI
Why founders must have hard conversations to grow
Y Combinator
February 23, 2023
Communication
9
Management
6
Most founders ask the wrong question — find the one behind it
Co-founders who never disagree are one conflict from implosion
Good employees want bad news; hiding it loses their trust
How to launch your startup: continuous launches beat the perfect one
Y Combinator
February 9, 2023
Growth hacking
9
MVP & prototyping
7
Copywriting
6
Launch immediately — waiting for perfection kills startups before they start.
One clear sentence about what you do is your most important growth tool.
Every channel — HN, communities, social, waitlists — is a separate launch opportunity.
Identity & self-belief
YouTube
Why Silicon Valley shifted from nonconformists to conformists
Y Combinator
February 5, 2023
Identity & self-belief
9
Motivation
6
Tech went from a fringe career to a mainstream status game
Conformists treat investors as customers, not users
Real builders bet on themselves, not on fitting in
How to set smarter startup goals and avoid common traps
Y Combinator
January 11, 2023
Goal setting
9
Business models
6
Fake metrics let founders avoid measuring whether anything actually works
Winning the fundraising game often means losing control of your company
Cheating to hit a goal means you learned nothing — and you know it
Prospecting & outreach
YouTube
How to get your first customers as a founder
Y Combinator
December 29, 2022
Prospecting & outreach
9
Sales systems & CRM
7
Product-market fit
5
Founders must do sales themselves before hiring anyone else.
Outbound is a numbers game — 100 emails is never enough.
Charge from day one; unpaid pilots mean you have no customers.
Conversion rate optimisation
YouTube
Website design critique: four startups reviewed by Webflow CEO
Y Combinator
December 23, 2022
Conversion rate optimisation
9
Copywriting
8
Customer discovery
5
Your homepage has five seconds to answer: what is this, and is it for me?
Social proof placed before the value prop is wasted — sequence matters.
Conflicting headlines for different personas signal unclear product thinking.
Startup business models and pricing: lessons from YC's top 100
Y Combinator
December 15, 2022
Business models
9
Pricing strategy
8
Marketplaces are only 14% of YC top 100 but create 30% of total value.
5% difference in monthly churn can be the difference between life and death.
Segment raised prices 150x — from $120/year to $18,000 — in one sales meeting.
Top-down vs bottom-up B2B sales strategies for startups
Y Combinator
December 8, 2022
B2B sales
9
Business models
7
Growth hacking
5
Top-down locks in executives; bottom-up converts users into buyers.
Scaling top-down forces a price floor of $10k–$100k.
Bottom-up still needs salespeople — just far more efficient ones.
Customer discovery
YouTube
How to talk to users: a practical guide for early-stage founders
Y Combinator
December 1, 2022
Customer discovery
10
MVP & prototyping
7
Never introduce your idea in an interview — it biases every answer
Users have good problems but reliably bad solutions; stay problem-focused
Best founders talk to users before launch and never stop