2005
Anu Hariharan said the first investment check in Y Combinator's first batch was $20,000, and the early batches were self-funded by the founders.
“Remember, the first check in YC, the first batch was $20,000.”
Topic
Y Combinator
33 facts from 17 episodes, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
2008
Jeff Bezos spoke at Y Combinator's 2008 Startup School shortly after Amazon Web Services launched, pitching startups on using AWS.
“in 2008, Bezos came and this was right after AWS had launched”
2011
Courtland Allen's Y Combinator batch was winter 2011, and he applied in late 2010.
“This was like we had winter 2011 for YC. So this was like in the fall of 2010, like November, December. We were applying.”
2011
Courtland Allen says Yuri Milner announced during his Y Combinator batch that every company would receive an additional $140,000 investment.
“we're going to give everybody like $140,000 of additional money, sort of no strings attached as an investment”
2012
Rose met Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong at a Y Combinator Demo Day and told him he wanted to invest.
“And I saw him at Demo Day at YC. And I told him I wanted to invest.”
2013
DoorDash raised a $2.4 million seed round after Y Combinator in fall 2013.
“they raise a $2.4 million seed round in the fall of 2013”
2015
Anu Hariharan said YC Continuity was the first time Y Combinator itself offered follow-on capital to its companies, with individual partners previously investing on their own.
“Continuity was the first time there was follow-on capital.”
2015
Anu Hariharan said the median time to IPO in 2015 was 11 years, which left YC alumni needing large private growth rounds.
“11 years. Yeah. And so YC Alums came to YC partners often and said”
2020
Anu Hariharan said Y Combinator owns its Mountain View building but has run its batches fully remotely since the pandemic.
“We own the Mountain View building. We have that, but since the pandemic, all our batches have been fully remote.”
2020
Supabase spent the first week of its Y Combinator batch migrating about 800 databases from DigitalOcean to AWS.
“And so we spent the first week of being in YC, migrating 800 databases to a different cloud, which, you know, if you've ever migrated one database, you know how painful it is.”
2022
Anu Hariharan said about half of Y Combinator's batch was international after the move to remote operations.
“But going remote really helped us. 50% of our batch is international.”
2022
Anu Hariharan said Y Combinator's community included around 4,000 companies and more than 8,500 alumni, coordinated heavily through WhatsApp groups.
“We have around 4,000 companies and more than 8,500 alumni.”
2022
Anu Hariharan said a company is admitted to a YC batch if a single group partner strongly backs it.
“as long as one group partner said a strong yes, I really need them in the batch, they're accepted.”
2022
Per PitchBook, as cited in the episode, the combined value of Y Combinator companies was about $600 billion.
“It's well over 500 billion. PitchBook says 600 billion. 600 billion dollars.”
2022
Anu Hariharan said the median age of a Y Combinator founder is 27.
“the median age of a YC founder is 27, which means they have probably managed a sum total of three people in their life before they founded the company.”
2022
Anu Hariharan said Y Combinator's acceptance rate was still below 3%, with about 400 companies per batch.
“Our acceptance rate is still below 3%, but yeah.”
2023
Chris Van Pelt said about 70 percent of a recent Y Combinator class was working on generative AI, often treating models as just another API.
“a lot of entrepreneurs. Like 70 of the YC class is doing some gen AI thing, uh, they're coming and using these things, seeing it just as another API they can hit and use.”
2024
Jacob Lauritzen went through Y Combinator in 2023, and Legora went through it in 2024.
“Yeah, I was in YC 23, Legora was 24.”
2026
Paul Copplestone says about 60% of every Y Combinator batch uses Supabase.
“we have 60% of every YC batch use Supabase.”
Undated
Courtland Allen says Dropbox went through Y Combinator while he was at MIT, and that Dropbox was also an MIT startup.
“Dropbox like went through and Dropbox was also an MIT startup. So everybody on campus had like a bunch of free Dropbox codes”
Undated
Courtland Allen's first application to Y Combinator was a Facebook app called Fmail, a Gmail-style email app inside Facebook.
“the very first one was this company called Fmail, which stood for like get this Gmail for Facebook”
Undated
Flock Safety is a Y Combinator company built in Atlanta by second-time founder Garrett Langley.
“there's a company called flock safety that was a YC company built in Atlanta by second-time founders Garrett Langley extraordinary founder”
Undated
Y Combinator began as a program called the Summer Founders Program.
“He's like, no, I did not expect to build one of those. It was called the Summer Founders Program.”
Undated
The host says Paul Graham noticed in Y Combinator office hours that struggling founders often weren't using their own products.
“that the ones, uh, that were kind of lost or like kind of not doing well, they were weren't even using their own product.”
Undated
Y Combinator invested in Atrium, and its general counsel at the time later became OpenAI's general counsel, according to Pereyra.
“was the GC at Y Combinator when they did the Atrium investment.”
Undated
Brian Chesky says 159 of 175 companies in the latest Y Combinator batch were enterprise companies.
“I'm on the board of Y Combinator, 175 companies last batch, 159 were enterprise.”
Undated
Brian Chesky says Sequoia funded Airbnb with $600,000 at a $3 million post-money valuation, the highest for a Y Combinator company at the time.
“Sequoia just funded us, $600,000 at 3 million dollar post money valuation, highest valuation Y Combinator.”
Undated
Hinds cites a Stanford study finding that 41% of Y Combinator AI startups are automating tasks people would prefer to keep human.
“There was a fascinating study that came out of Stanford a while back that found 41% of Y Combinator AI startups are automating things that people would prefer to keep human.”
Undated
Lassen says both a three-person Y Combinator startup and the publicly traded company UiPath have gone through AIUC-1 certification.
“I will mention at this point, we've had a three person Y Combinator startup go through this. We've had Ui path that is publicly traded go through this.”
Undated
Tsavo Knott reports that a Y Combinator general partner recently said the core of becoming AI native is to record everything.
“One of the general partners over at Y Combinator, he recently said, like, the the core to becoming AI native period is to record everything”
Undated
John McMullan says one of the hottest companies coming out of Y Combinator works on AI agent evaluation.
“I think one of the the hottest companies coming out of Y Combinator”
Undated
Legora was originally named Leia when its founder applied to Y Combinator.
“reading Max's YC application, uh, and like, helping him getting into YC, get Leia, as it was called back then, into YC.”
Undated
Legora's first forward deployed engineer was also its first New York hire, a former Y Combinator founder, hired roughly nine months before the interview.
“So we hired our first forward deployed engineer, that was our first hire in New York, also YC, uh, founder, nine months ago.”
Episodes
- 29 Mar 2023Sessions: David Senra (Founders Podcast)3h 20m
- 20 Jun 2022The Playbook: Lessons from 200+ Company Stories1h 5m
- 6 Jun 2022American Dynamism (with Katherine Boyle)1h 18m
- 12 May 2022Arena Show Part I: Idea Dinner + YC Continuity1h 27m
- 30 Aug 2021Kevin Rose from Web 2.0 to Web31h 40m
- 17 Dec 2020Special: Acquired x Indie Hackers1h 51m
- 10 Dec 2020DoorDash3h 0m
- 31 Jul 2023#314 Paul Graham (How To Do Great Work)57m
- 2 Nov 2026Building Legal Agents When You Can't See the Data - Jacob Lauritzen, CTO of Legora1h 7m
- 28 Oct 2026Why Agents Love Supabase1h 16m
- 5 Dec 2025Scaling Legal AI and Building Next-Generation Law Firms with Harvey Co-Founder and President Gabe Pereyra44m
- 5 May 2026Brian Chesky - AI Founder Mode - [Invest Like the Best, EP.471]1h 16m
- 16 Nov 2023Unlocking the Power of Language Models in Enterprise: A Deep Dive with Chris Van Pelt52m
- 8 Oct 2026What Shared Intelligence Really Fixes in Enterprise AI - with John McMullan of Observe.ai27m
- 9 Jul 2026How AI Is Transforming Governance and Workflow Automation in the Enterprise - with Tsavo Knott of Pieces41m
- 10 Jun 2026Babysitting the Machine: Glean's Rebecca Hinds on the Hidden Human Labor of AI at Work1h 45m
- 25 Jun 2026AIUC-1: Building trust in AI agents45m