Y Combinator Blog
blog.ycombinator.com · Company blog · on HN since 2013
Y Combinator's blog, with startup advice, funding terms, and announcements about Hacker News and the accelerator.
What HN saysHN links it for YC deal terms, equity advice, and Hacker News guidelines and moderation posts. Commenters cite it when discussing funding amounts and HN norms.
643HN people shared it
395linked it in comments
789stories submitted
78Kstory points
11 months agolast shared
2013people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Meet the People Taking over Hacker News29 people · 614 points · first shared 2014 · 286 comments on HN
- 2New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity28 people · 1.2K points · first shared 2015 · 631 comments on HN
- 3Hacker News API17 people · 1.7K points · first shared 2014 · 298 comments on HN
- 4Request For Research: Basic Income16 people · 1.9K points · first shared 2016 · 1.1K comments on HN
- 5How to Split Equity Among Co-Founders14 people · 11 points · first shared 2017 · 1 comments on HN
- 6Two HN Announcements12 people · 698 points · first shared 2015 · 284 comments on HN
- 7The New Deal12 people · 627 points · first shared 2014 · 178 comments on HN
- 8Diversity and Startups12 people · 163 points · first shared 2014 · 202 comments on HN
- 9Welcome Peter11 people · 650 points · first shared 2015 · 148 comments on HN
- 10YC Portfolio Stats9 people · 288 points · first shared 2014 · 119 comments on HN
- 11HARC7 people · 415 points · first shared 2016 · 101 comments on HN
- 12YC Stats7 people · 250 points · first shared 2015 · 135 comments on HN
- 13How to Choose Domain Extensions for an International Audience7 people · 4 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 14Announcing the Safe, a Replacement for Convertible Notes6 people · 517 points · first shared 2013 · 111 comments on HN
- 15Why Toys?6 people · 468 points · first shared 2018 · 200 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
makeee · 2021-07-31
I was doing some contract work on the side while building the MVP, but switched to full-time right after launching it. I wouldn't necessarily recommend that though.. basically burnt through all my savings over 4 months. Right as I was starting too look for more contract work I ended up winning a $15k grant from YC [0] which bridged the gap until I got to profitability. Now at around $6k - $10k/m (not recurring, so it varies).
[0] https://blog.ycombinator.com/announcing-the-startup-school-2019-grant-…
meroes · 2021-07-08
For an extreme example, there are finite patterns behind the lava lamps at Cloudfare or the chaos of Jupiter's storms. These are sufficiently random for any current need I can currently imagine though.
But then I also see that "classical computers can never be built big enough to explore more than 400, actually more than, probably 100 qubits, 100 qubits doesn’t seem like very much. No classical computer can do the calculation of following what 100 qubits do" https://blog.ycombinator.com/leonard-susskind-on-richard-feynman-the-h…
Are we really in no danger of quantum computers being able decipher patterns behind these traditional sources of noise? There is no pattern to quantum randomness. Aren't we going to have switch to truly random sources of noise eventually, instead of pseudorandom ones (anything non quantum)?
alphachloride · 2021-06-02
One annoying thing I have noticed about many company/project blogs that they have no link on the header to go to the actual project website (project.com). Instead the main logo takes back to the blog (blog.project.com). You have to manually type the URL for the actual website.
For e.g. even this site: https://blog.ycombinator.com/
tacostakohashi · 2021-04-21
I used to be amazed that anyone found it appealing back when it was $20,000!
https://blog.ycombinator.com/a-new-standard-deal/
Even if you're eating ramen, that's like 3-6 months of expenses at best. For anyone that isn't like fresh out of college, you'd think they'd have access to that kind of capital through savings, family/friends, or even credit cards.
I guess it rather strengthens your point about it being all about the brand name rather than the capital.
boogies · 2021-01-26
Read, my first favorite comment was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17613281 and I find it pretty accurate. Sometimes great comments turn grey just after posting only to bounce back up later, thanks to people taking time to read them. I’ve also had showdead enabled in my profile settings virtually the whole time I’ve been here, and been able to vouch for some wrongly killed posts, as the mods say:
> Currently, when an account is banned, a software filter trips, or enough users flag a post, the post goes [dead], meaning only users with ‘showdead’ turned on in their profile can see it. The trouble is that some posts end up [dead] when they shouldn’t be. Banned accounts sometimes post good comments, software filters sometimes have false positives, and users sometimes flag things unfairly.
[https://blog.ycombinator.com/two-hn-announcements/]
tomhoward · 2020-08-27
YC announced the closure of YC China last year.
https://blog.ycombinator.com/an-update-on-yc-china/
There’s no “using another legal entity to do their bidding over there”. It’s just closed.
That said, it’s not clear that it’s unequivocally morally superior to deny a service to all 1B+ Chinese people, many of whom could have been founders of great companies or customers/beneficiaries of those companies, just because of the actions of a government, particularly one that was not elected by those citizens.
But that’s moot now. YC China has been closed.
divbzero · 2020-07-22
This is an excellent essay that speaks to the financial calculus of startup investing.
In addition, I think YC partners also have a non-financial desire (e.g. first footnote in that same essay) to encourage entrepreneurship more broadly. Hence the larger YC batches and experiments like YC Fellowship [1] and online Startup School [2].
[1]: https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-fellowship/
[2]: https://blog.ycombinator.com/onlineclass/
zackmorris · 2020-04-01
The feeling of being on-call is what sucks the soul from a worker's body. I've experienced it off and on over the last 20 years and IMHO it's one of the great problems of our time. I'd like to see labor move towards a direction more like Uber, where you decide when you're on the clock, and when you're off, you're off.
One of the difficulties though is that the Uber model only works for saturated and playbook industries like driving, delivering food, walking dogs, etc. It doesn't work so well for the decision-making tasks of more complex jobs where there are ramifications for every step:
https://blog.ycombinator.com/read-this-before-you-build-uber-for-x/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15150083
monkin · 2020-03-13
It's not an answer for what I asked for. Demo day is at the end of 3 month program...
But there's a hint in other blog post:
> We want to make sure founders know that the YC Summer 2020 batch will take place. Our online application is open now and we will run our application review process as we always do, with some modifications to how we run interviews. Additionally, depending on the circumstances this summer, some or all of the batch may take place remotely over video.
https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-s20-batch-updates/
Yet, would love to get some official info after traveling ban.
brudgers · 2020-01-28
YC has a podcast. I am not saying it is the best. It just seems somewhat relevant. https://blog.ycombinator.com/category/podcast/
tlb · 2019-08-21
Recommended reading: https://blog.ycombinator.com/how-to-manage-a-board/ (especially the "board compensation" section)
breck · 2019-07-01
I haven’t seen a better checklist than this: https://blog.ycombinator.com/how-not-to-fail/
The two things I would note is that 1) it’s really hard to make something people want—-you need to be good at your craft and have a team that complements each other 2) NPS score is a great way to measure whether you have done that.
QueensGambit · 2019-06-28
Garry Tan (Former Partner @ YC) recommended these 2 design books as a must for engineers:
- Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
- The Design of Everyday Things: Donald Norman
If you want be a really good designer, he recommends 4 more books: https://www.collectoral.com/collection/101397753425638859326/com_28315…
You might also want to watch his video on design for startups: https://blog.ycombinator.com/design-for-startups-by-garry-tan/
calvinfo · 2019-04-03
Thank you! I'd agree with the other commenters that Peter's talk is the best place to go for hearing the in-depth story: https://blog.ycombinator.com/peter-reinhardt-on-finding-product-market…
I'd say more generally that finding product-market-fit felt much more like a 'pull' than a 'push' motion. We had been trying for 8 months to convince even a single user to rely on the product we were building earlier, and it just wasn't sticking.
When we launched today's product, we started seeing a lot more pull from customers. We solved one problem that other products did not, which prompted a bunch more requests from customers.
clairity · 2019-01-31
there was a spinoff professional networking/mentoring group whose name is escaping me at the moment, but she can find such resources via women in product: https://www.womenpm.org
yc’s ffc ( https://blog.ycombinator.com/?s=ffc ) is also useful for the more entrepreurially minded.
m-i-l · 2019-01-08
See also the YC curated selection of HN highlights[0] and also an algorithmically generated list of (recent) best comments[1].
[0] https://blog.ycombinator.com/category/hacker-news/
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments
marksomnian · 2018-12-29
Seems like Messenger is getting WeChat-ized - in China, WeChat [0] is your one-stop shop to getting anything done - chatting, following celebrities, booking housekeeping, payments, even "mini-programs". And now many Western messaging apps are starting to take inspiration from this [1].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat
[1]: https://blog.ycombinator.com/lessons-from-wechat/
capocannoniere · 2018-10-17
Here's another fun one:
The _average_ Y Combinator company is worth ~100M [1]
The _median_ Y Combinator company, however, is worth closer to $0 (the majority of YC companies don't get to a Series A).
This just highlights how counter-intuitive power-law distributions are.
[1] Calculation:
Discard pre YC'17 companies for the purposes of this calculation, as these are still too early stage for meaningful analysis. Brex, Faire and Atrium are the only YC '17 or later on this list.
Numerator: The top 100 companies have a combined valuation of ~$110B, according to this list.
Denominator: There were 1,400 YC companies as of Summer '17 according to https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-summer-2017-stats/. Removing S17 and W17 gives about 1,100 companies prior to '17
yorwba · 2018-10-16
Intense discussion is what https://news.ycombinator.com/active is for. There's also https://news.ycombinator.com/best which (I assume) puts more weight on votes and has less churn. Both still show this submission, although it has dropped off the default frontpage.
Those alternatives should probably be advertised better than just that tiny link in the footer.
If you're only interested in YC news specifically, you can also subscribe to https://blog.ycombinator.com/feed/ . Most of the articles there don't ever make the front page, I think.
tuhins · 2018-10-09
John Preskill's interview here is a good place to start for the high level https://blog.ycombinator.com/john-preskill-on-quantum-computing.
Scott Aaronson's lecture notes are also great https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3943.
bbrunner · 2018-09-28
Great to see this happen again after the original
"The New Deal" in 2014[0]. I'm a big believer in having enough capital to not have to worry about day-to-day costs so you can focus on actually running and growing your business, and this feels like a good sort-of "cost of living" increase.
[0] https://blog.ycombinator.com/the-new-deal/
soneca · 2018-08-22
Came back here just to say to myself that I was right and it was worth to wait :)
https://blog.ycombinator.com/startup-school-every-company-that-applied…
indescions_2018 · 2018-05-21
YC did a recent podcast with former Artforum editor Michelle Kuo on Experiments in Art and Technology
https://blog.ycombinator.com/experiments-in-art-and-technology-with-ar…
And then there's Mondo 2000. Defining periodical of "cyberculture". Remains deeply influential even today
https://archive.org/details/mondohistory
I'd also recommend the documentary "We Live In Public" as a cautionary tale regarding networked utopias ;)
sharemywin · 2018-03-20
Might not be any since there were only 8 as of 2015:
As of August 26, 2015:
Number of YC companies worth more than $1 billion: 8 [1]
Number of YC companies worth more than $100 million: >40
https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-stats/
hieu · 2018-03-13
I think the fact that it looks like toy is a plus to YC.
https://blog.ycombinator.com/why-toys/
Great founders + (seemingly) toy/stupid/too hard ideas = how YC selects.
aspHax0 · 2018-02-20
https://blog.ycombinator.com/category/newsletter/
http://ycombinator.us7.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=6507bf4e4c2df3fdba…
Those are the ones I'm referring to. But I'm glad to see there's still some growth on this! I'll definitely subscribe and look into it.
dna_polymerase · 2018-02-10
Ethereum is currently worth >$83B
The 50 biggest YCombinator companies are worth $100B [0], so I'd argue the project does really good.
[0]: http://blog.ycombinator.com/2017-yc-annual-letter/
TACIXAT · 2018-02-02
QQ was a desktop focused app and WeChat was a ground up write of messaging for mobile. Competing against themselves is pretty brilliant IMO, it creates alternatives for the users but still allows their company to own the market.
Interesting YC blog about Tencent and WeChat. [1]
1. http://blog.ycombinator.com/lessons-from-wechat/
lgierth · 2017-11-30
There's only so many different ways of funding open source software development, and we selected one that wouldn't have us struggle for grants or VC money every other year. The funding of open source infrastructure is a huge problem. @jbenet did a great in-depth podcast with YC: https://blog.ycombinator.com/ipfs-coinlist-and-the-filecoin-ico-with-j… (transcript included)
indescions_2017 · 2017-11-04
See this fantastic recent YC podcast with former Artforum EIC Michelle Kuo. Where she talks at length about E.A.T. And collabs between Billy Klüver, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Feynman, and Bell Labs engineers curious about experimenting with LSD!
http://blog.ycombinator.com/experiments-in-art-and-technology-with-art…
And for inspiration:
Billy Klüver: Motion of the Electron
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK3wnOGPnGs