Yesterday we hosted 400 top university students at the YC Summer Conference - a fun day of talks about startups.  Talking to the students afterwards, I found myself giving a lot of the same advice. So in case it's useful to others, here is my startup advice for students.

The YC voice mafia.

This new model lets you talk to an AI you can see, just like a video call. In two years this will be common, but for now it is a pretty magical experience to talk to an AI that looks like a person.

I have a bunch of angels in my cap table, and without fail, the best are @YCombinator alums. It is, of course, partly cause they are or were all founders, but there is also a gap between the angel founders from YC and not. I was trying to figure out why, and I think I know. It's

I just moved back to SF after nearly 3 years and the vibe shift is palpable. Not long ago the stories were remote work death spirals, post-ZIRP zombie companies/funds, boarded windows, organized CVS raids, wanton car window smashing. Now the city feels markedly cleaner, safer,

Fun fact: Pre-YC I scraped to get 200 followers. Posted daily about my startup when hardly anyone knew us. When I showed creators @KoyalAI, they all wanted thousands of $ to shout it out. I bet on myself instead. Post-YC, that same habit delivered: single tweets - hit millions

YC operates as a network effects business. Each incremental company added to the ecosystem increases the value of the network for all other participants. The excellent Elad Gil identifies three key network effects: 1) Peer-based help --- YC founders tap batch mates for

Another big win for the Y Combinator ecosystem in India - delivered by an exceptional Indian e-commerce company :)

.@flowglad is an open-source, zero-webhook payments provider. Their full-stack SDK lets you check customers' features and usage credits in real time, based on billing state. And their AI generates a setup prompt for your pricing model and stack, so you can one-shot payments.

I was in YC (@ycombinator) S09 16.5 years ago (@bumptech). It is incredible how much this group of people impacts my life to this day. Some recent highlights: - I worked for @patrickc at Stripe from 2020-2022 - Since I started angel investing (100 companies in the last year) I

@ankerbachryhl @MadsLunau Also on YouTube:

Parahelp has an incredible backstory too. The founders @ankerbachryhl and @MadsLunau grew up in rural Denmark, started Parahelp as teenagers, and went through a two year pivot grind before landing on this idea.

Parahelp is one of the top vertical AI companies to come out of YC. They are automating support for AI-native companies like Perplexity, Replit, & ElevenLabs. Did a deep dive with the founders on how real agentic systems are built and their recent Series A with @jaltma.

Quietly confident this panel ages well.

YC renamed group partners to general partners.. Because that's what they actually are. Investors in the company for life. This moves YC partners away from the old narrative about YC as summer camp, with camp counselors who you never see again after demo day. YC partners will

Whenever you think a market is "crowded" or "there's too many competitors", remember that a YC startup (Giga) beat Sierra in a direct bakeoff to get Doordash as a customer. Its never too late. Never listen to the haters. Just build.

Y Combinator is the only organization in the world that has spun off more than 100 billion-dollar companies. Two months into the program, here is my take on why:

It was never “build what’s fundable” and it isn’t now. It’s always been: make something people want. This comes from users and customers and the needs of others.

Congratulations to the EZDubs team on being acquired by Cisco! @PadmanabhanKri, @amrutavarsh and @kimocode are true experts in speech translation, and now the technology they've built will be embedded in Cisco's videoconferencing products and used by millions.

YC spotted Groww, Meesho, Razorpay, and Zepto before any big Indian VC, without even having an office here. They’ll likely make over 50x on their India bets in the next two years. Crazy!

Mixy launched into YC with 1.5 million users, 15 million music mashups created, and 14,000 App Store ratings. They gave YC 7% anyway. Most people don't understand this. They think YC is for first-time founders with just an idea. That used to be true. Not anymore. This batch