Y Combinator
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Y Combinator publishes practical startup guidance on product building, fundraising, founder decision-making, and scaling high-growth technology companies.
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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.
Why you should (or should not) work at a startup
Y Combinator
November 2, 2018
Goal setting
8
Case studies
7
Getting rich from startup equity is statistically unlikely — don't join for that.
Startups hand you roles you're unqualified for, compressing years of learning into months.
Slope matters more than starting point — failing startups teach as much as winning ones.
How Paul Buchheit thinks about building $100 billion companies
Y Combinator
October 24, 2018
Vision & mission
8
Product-market fit
7
Identity & self-belief
5
$100B companies ride an exponential change — they don't create it
Too much funding before product-market fit kills startups, not saves them
Start with 100 obsessed users; broad mediocrity can't be converted at scale
Founder interviews
YouTube
Scaling Front: people, culture, customers, and sales after PMF
Y Combinator
October 24, 2018
Founder interviews
9
Culture building
7
Pricing strategy
6
Discipline — not vision — is the primary driver of durable growth.
Never hire to solve a problem you haven't solved yourself.
Radical transparency on revenue, churn, and board decks drives employee engagement.
Founder interviews
YouTube
Elad Gil on product market fit, hiring, and scaling startups
Y Combinator
October 18, 2018
Founder interviews
9
Product-market fit
8
Fundraising & VC
6
Market beats team every time — even great founders die in bad markets
Three clear signals your product has found real market fit
Why multi-miracle business models almost always fail
Equity & cap tables
YouTube
Understanding SAFEs, dilution, and cap tables for early-stage founders
Y Combinator
October 17, 2018
Equity & cap tables
9
Fundraising & VC
8
Post-money SAFEs let you calculate exactly how much you've sold
Stacked SAFEs plus option pool can cut founder ownership in half before Series A
Over-optimising your valuation cap changes final ownership by barely 1%
Founder interviews
YouTube
Building payments infrastructure for African businesses: Paystack's story
Y Combinator
October 16, 2018
Founder interviews
10
Business models
6
Hiring & recruitment
5
Less than 2% of Nigeria's consumer spending goes through cards — yet.
One bad payment experience kills digital trust forever; Paystack designs around that.
Local context — not technology — is why international payments companies can't crack Africa.
Founder interviews
YouTube
Hardware and hard tech startups: lessons from Pebble's founder
Y Combinator
October 12, 2018
Founder interviews
9
MVP & prototyping
8
Bootstrapping
6
Why raising money killed Pebble's frugality — twice
Two crowdfunding moments founders consistently confuse
Start selling before your product is ready — always
MVP & prototyping
YouTube
Technical founder advice: building teams, tech debt, and shipping fast
Y Combinator
October 10, 2018
MVP & prototyping
9
Hiring & recruitment
6
Processes & SOPs
5
V1 code is throwaway — use the stack you know best
Enterprise customers paying six figures trigger real engineering rigour
Stop coding earlier; hiring compounds faster than writing features yourself
Founder interviews
YouTube
How Stripe's CEO Patrick Collison thinks about running a startup
Y Combinator
October 3, 2018
Founder interviews
9
Long-term planning
7
Product-market fit
6
Your growth curve isn't cosmic — it's something you construct.
Pre-PMF, iteration speed beats every other metric.
Consensus-based decision-making is a slow death for scaling teams.
Product-market fit
YouTube
How Front built a shared inbox product and retained its team
Y Combinator
October 3, 2018
Product-market fit
9
Case studies
8
Culture building
7
Score features on impact vs. complexity — nine tiers, always vision-filtered.
500 customers, $1M ARR before a single marketing hire.
Retention comes from mission, hiring bar, and radical transparency — not perks.
Founder interviews
YouTube
Building Science Exchange: a biotech marketplace founder's journey
Y Combinator
October 3, 2018
Founder interviews
9
Business models
7
Product-market fit
5
A non-obvious side project became the inflection point that unlocked pharma deals.
Most published scientific results are not reproducible — and that's a systems problem.
Biotech has no true MVP; commercial revenue requires a fully approved product.
Pitching investors
YouTube
How to apply and succeed at Y Combinator
Y Combinator
September 28, 2018
Pitching investors
9
Fundraising & VC
7
Almost every reason founders don't apply is self-imposed, not real.
Clarity beats persuasion — short, jargon-free applications win.
The interview is a conversation; self-awareness beats over-rehearsed confidence.
SEO fundamentals for startups: organic growth as an untapped channel
Y Combinator
September 27, 2018
SEO
10
Content marketing
6
Paid channels are saturated — organic is the underinvested, compounding alternative.
Crawlable architecture and raw text content beat tricks every time.
Quality links from real content beat hundreds of bought or swapped links.
Hiring & recruitment
YouTube
How to find, evaluate, and close engineering hires at a startup
Y Combinator
September 26, 2018
Hiring & recruitment
9
Processes & SOPs
6
Management
5
Interviews are as noisy as random movie reviews — structure fixes this.
Personal networks beat all other sourcing channels, especially early on.
Speed and transparency in offers close candidates big companies can't.
Founder sales: how to close your first enterprise customers
Y Combinator
September 26, 2018
B2B sales
10
Prospecting & outreach
8
Pricing strategy
6
Only 2.5% of the market will buy from an unproven startup
Sales is listening 70% of the time, not pitching
Free trials kill momentum — use a 30-day opt-out instead