How YC redesigned its homepage to inspire founders, not convert them

Executive overview

The old YC homepage was utilitarian — a B2B SaaS template that listed logos, used vague headlines, and framed YC's value through what it doesn't do. The redesign starts from a different question: not how to convert visitors, but how to make a builder see themselves in YC's story.

The new site leads with the word "formidable" — drawn from Paul Graham's essays — and builds every section around founder faces, founder words, and the transformation arc from batch participant to company builder.

The core insight: show founders who they could become, not a program they could join.

What was wrong with the old homepage

• Hero section felt like a generic B2B SaaS template
• Top companies shown as logos only — founders who built them were invisible
• Headlines were vague: "we help founders make something people want" without quantifying outcomes
• YC's differentiators were framed negatively: "we don't take a board seat", "we don't take months to decide"
• No emotional pull; nothing to make a founder imagine themselves in the story

Core ideas behind the new design

• Lead with "formidable" — a word PG used repeatedly to describe early YC founders; defined in a footnote as a nod to his essay style
• Before/after founder photos: humble early-stage headshot on the left, successful company founder on the right — makes the transformation tangible
• Body copy in the "what is YC" section is kept almost verbatim from the original PG-written version, 15 years old; only factual details updated
• Founder quotes assembled from interviews into seamless flowing text — no attributions unless you hover
• Partners section shows each partner's batch-era photo on hover — makes the "we were in your shoes" message visceral rather than stated

Design principles applied

• Remove all call-to-action buttons from the storytelling sections — an apply button mid-scroll breaks the narrative
• No borders, hard dividers, or unnecessary design elements; content floats on the page
• Animation used only where it communicates something: AI-animated photos of advisors make the section feel alive without changing faces
• Minimalism in the hero to let the word and message land without distraction

The build process: Figma to live prototyping with AI

• Started with mood boards and a few Figma frames to set direction
• Moved quickly into a live repo and used Claude Opus 4.5 in Cursor as a design collaborator
• Prompts like "here is the information, display it creatively" generated starting points to iterate from
• Working live rather than in static frames enabled animation and interaction to be explored in real time
• Interactions that wouldn't have been conceivable in Figma — such as the scrolling before/after founder carousel — emerged from live iteration
• The shift freed the team to focus on storytelling rather than implementation mechanics

Broader trend

• Static images and text will give way to purposeful interactivity and animation
• AI tooling makes that shift accessible to small design teams
• The right question is not "what converts?" but "what communicates?"