How I Got Into Y Combinator — YC S23

so I previously made a video about my story of getting into why comor and then doing the program for 6 weeks and then leaving because of co-founder issues and you can watch that video over here but basically this video is about the getting in process of how exactly I got in and then also helped two friends get in with two different companies so like I helped them with admissions like application form advice and also like did the mock interview for them as well so yeah like the official y Comm YouTube channel have like official videos on this as well and I would recommend watching them first and foremost but this video is about like an application perspective or like an applicant of how they approached watching those videos and also applying so for the application

form itself you have to consider what category of companies even get in like if you're starting a restaurant or you're starting a hotel business or something and you're applying for yator you're not going to get in because they don't invest in that like you want to look for the website and you can see it's mostly software and like some Hardware companies and you rarely see like a laundry like company or whatever or you don't see like a video game company I had one friend say to me that he's planning on starting his own video game company that makes like mobile games and he was playing for my comat and I was like dude you're not going to get in because they've barely accepted any of those companies so it's usually within the software space and it's usually within like the hardware and hardtech space so you can see some biotech companies like nuclear fusion companies or like some like supersonic shed engine companies basically any company that has a potential of being like a billion dollar company in the future they like to accept and your like small restaurant business is not going to be a billion dollar company or it's like much lower odds of it actually becoming so compared to like technology so yeah I think it's worth going on the website and actually seeing what kind of category of companies are accepted like if you're starting a mattress company and you've never seen a mattress company or like anything related to that except in to combinator then I don't think you should really apply with that idea you should consider working on something else but you can still make software to help tackle the target markets that you're interested in if those markets are big enough so for example my friend who was applying with a gaming studio idea and then got rejected like he could have applied with an idea to build software to help gaming Studios with like AI generated sound effects and like textures and assets for their video games to make like the gaming development process easier and that would have been more likely to be accepted than like the actual gaming studio idea and I think like if you go on the website you can actually see a few examples where this particular idea

was accepted now the next part is that one of the co-founders almost always have to be technical like if you're playing with an idea to make like nuclear reactors or like nuclear fusion or something and you don't have any physicists on your team that have experien in this then you're unlikely to be accepted if you're playing with an idea to make like an app or mobile software or like something then if no one on the team can code then you won't be accepted because why cator require you to have a technical founder in the sense like they require someone on the team to be able to make the thing that is able to be made like ideally one of the co-founders so for example like if none of the co-founders can code and they're all like marketing people then they might say oh like we're going to Offshore the development somewhere else or like we're going to get some people in India to make the software and that almost will never work because the iteration cycle or the feedback loop is much less strong for that particular scenario so like if you're able to code yourself and you or like one of your co-founders is able to make the product then you firstly a have a better sense of what a good product is going to be and you're going to be able to make a better product and then also grow the company from there and B like your iteration feedback loop and your cycle is much faster in the sense you're able to make like 10 20 30 iterations on the product and improving it every single day instead of going back and forth between like some offshore development agency and another component is that you

almost always need a co-founder like there very few cases that they have accepted people of a co-founder like those people usually ended up bringing a co-founder like many months later and the people who like were solo Founders in cator they usually already very impressive where they have like a track record of starting companies alone and doing really well alone whereas like for most people vast majority of people especially recent graduates or like college students uh like you need to have a co-founder and ideally that's someone you have a very relationship with and you can trust and you can also like work well together with and they usually ask you on the application form or the interview of how you know each other and if you say like oh I met them like one week ago at this like random party or whatever they're not very convinced that like you're going to be able to work well together if you've never worked together before so it's either that like you often have a good childhood friend or you have like a good friend of like many years that you've worked with on previous projects you might have even started a previous company or like a cheing company or something with them and you made a bunch of money together and you kind of have that relationship like in the ground or like you have already made significant progress on the startup already that you're applying with like if you're playing with just an idea then they would ideally want to see some kind of like evidence that you worked well together before and if you're applying with like a the current idea that you're working on and you have been working on it for some while and some years and you made a bunch of progress on it then like that's also a convincing reason basically they want to make sure that you both work together well and it could also be like three or four people as well so I think usually Beyond four you rarely see companies in y combinator Beyond four like sometimes they have six and seven uh but yeah like the most common case is that you have two people sometimes three and rarely four and the

next thing is you want to make sure your application form is Crystal Clear like you want to make sure everything reads clearly anyone is able to understand exactly what you do what you're about and so forth like why comor also emphasize this as well on their videos because the problem that many students especially end up having is that when you're a student you're so used to writing like fluff and using like fancy words and everything in between because like that's just how it is when you look at most college essays like they do that when you look at like most application forms for like internships or like writing essays or just anything else this is something that often happens whereas in the whyc application form if you write a bunch of fluff like they usually will just reject you because they don't know what you're doing and a pretty like common example would be something like you'd write when they ask you what you're doing you'd say like oh we're building a new paradigm for like social payments between institutions and like Banks and like uh cities and whatever and we're going to bring forth a new economical Golden Age like people write crap like this on their application form and it's just like well you just like gave a bunch of word nonsense like we don't actually know what you're doing and those application forms are usually almost rejected so whenever you're writing any of the answers you want to be crystal clear and you don't want to like add all this random fluff because usually in their eyes is if you're adding this random fluff it usually means that you haven't made any progress you don't have like any ideas you don't have a product like everything is just kind of hidden or obscure like even for simple questions of like how do the co-founders know each other if you write something like really vague or obscure like usually it's a red flag in their eyes and I think the idea that many students have is that if you write like fluffy stuff or like things with tons of words that don't really make any sense you will like Amaze them and then they will be stunned into confusion and they will have to accept you because of that and that almost never works is that like if they don't easily understand what you're doing or working on because you haven't explained it clearly enough then they will almost suddenly reject you and the people are reading application form like the group Partners have even said this themselves on their own like YouTube channel or own videos where they said like it's really important to be like clear there is a video here which is like 17 minutes into video Dalton like explains the importance of clarity and gives you some examples of like bad applications or like badly worded applications and some examples of like good applications that explain clearly what's going on and for me like when I was applying like I watched this video in full this particular video and then I read through the application form that we had wrote like on many different days and occasions to make sure it was like Crystal Clear like what are we actually doing because I think if you end up brushing application for in one day and you're so used to writing in the way that college students write where they write like cryptic vague nonsense on their like college essays then you would end up writing that out of habit and then it would just be end up being a bad application form and you may not be invited to an interview because of that and what this means is that some of your answers to application form questions will be very short so for example there's one question which is something like who made this or like who made the product and it's like after you put in a link to your demo or something like that and for that particular answer I think we just wrote like my technical co-founder Ray made of the product like 100% of what you see and that was literally two short sentences and if you write anything over than that or like anything which is like really long and confusing and then they kind of like hm this person is kind of hiding something that they're not telling us and it kind of makes a like sense of distrust with the person because ultimately like the people reading your application form will be working with you at the end of the day and they want to trust you so yeah I would just recommend watching all the official videos for the application form like the group Partners who are the ones reading your application form literally have official videos where they explain what they're looking for and how you should like fill out the form because like ultimately compar to most institutions why the application process is kind of vague like the why combinated one is really transparent like they literally tell you how to do everything like how to fill out the form so I would recommend watching those videos and making notes on them and then making sure your application form actually like fits or like Stacks against it of that you want to check that everything you write is like very clear you want to like emphasize like what the product actually does like write that in a very clear way that someone who may not necessarily be related to the field of the product can understand what the problem is and what you're solving so those kind of things

and I think kind another point you want to emphasize is a background of yourself and your co-founders so for example like in many cultures people are just not used to bragging about themselves like especially in the US like people are very used to bragging about themselves when it comes to like filling out application forms for college in the UK and other countries not so much like people are more shy reserved or humble and basically like you want to like emphasize impressive things that you have done in the sense of if you're applying to Y combinator and you have like free patents in like superconductors or something uh then write it on your application form like don't shy away from writing it because sometimes people are accepted for ideas different to what they applied for because yator still wants people of that particular background so I think in one pretty famous example case there were like fre physics PhD students who applied with the idea for a dating app and it's like they all three of them have physics phds why would they be working on a dating app so I think they were still accepted but they were told to work on a different idea which is more related to physics because they have no Competitive Edge or advantage in making a dating app so I would recommend really emphasizing ing what your particular background is especially you think it can be quite unique or different to most other applicants so like if you're influenc on social media with like a million followers you should emphasize that if you like made the first mobile banking app in Rwanda or something when you were like 17 years old you should emphasize that as well like you should basically write down relevant things that you think would be useful for them to know and then if they

like your application form you'll receive an invite to your interview and basically in the interview like email you get a link and it takes you to a page and there are a bunch of time slots that are available and you select to which time you and your co-founders are free for the interview and then you just choose that time like you don't have any other options and if you miss the interview time and dates like you're kind of screwed so you can't reschedule it and I would recommend like being very clear in the interview as well in terms of how you're answering the questions like if it feels like you're kind of like missing something or being suspicious in some way then I think they won't accept you because ultimately they will be working with you and they want to be able to trust you another common mistakes that many people make is that they sound too robotic in the interview it sounds like they kind of saying these rehearsed answers and if they ask a question that is slightly Off Script then like they suddenly break down or they suddenly like wedge in one of their rehearsed answers to answer the question so they didn't actually really answer the question they were asked like the interview is literally them on trying to understand your product and your backgrounds and like what problem this particular product solves and this bunch of like quickfire successive questions and in my interview in my particular case is it didn't it ended up being like 14 15 minutes like halfway for the inter they basically said like do you have any other ideas that you want to work on and basically during that time like we presented another idea and they asked a bunch of questions about that idea and yeah like we basically explained that idea and then we got accepted for the other idea that we mentioned in the interview and you can learn more about that in my previous video that I made about getting into W comat but yeah this

is a pretty common thing people get accepted and then they work on a different idea to what they originally applied with like there were many people like that in my batch I think one case was these people made like a restaurant app where you could order F at the table and now that working on like AI Government Contracting instead because like they pivoted I think in the first second week of the batch since they kind of realized like this original idea doesn't really make a lot of sense and this is the whole idea of like why community in the sense they would rather accept two three four people who are really good Founders or just seem like they could be really good founders with a bad idea and then make them pivot or like change to a different better idea then accepting bad Founders or bad potential founders with a good idea like it's much easier to have people who are really good co-founders or found ERS with a bad idea change their idea to a good idea then to have bad potential co-founders apply with a good idea and then make them good co-founders or Founders so in that sense I would recommend having over ideas prepared that you think would be quite good for your particular background and you have some experience with and you can do quite well because they may potentially ask you towards the end of the interview if you have any other ideas that you

want to work on and during the interview you should also be able to answer a why now question so they might ask you why does it make sense to work on your products now compared to like 5 10 years ago and Gary tan like the president of why coordinator made a video about this on his own YouTube channel about the why now of an idea and in many cases people are playing with an idea and it's like why does it make sense to work on this idea now compared to 5 10 years ago in the sense like this idea was previously possible why haven't other people like succeeded in doing that idea and a pretty common example is that many college students they think to themselves like man it's so hard to schedule like a time with all my friends to meet up because we're all so busy what if there was an app that made it really easy for us to like find a time to meet up and basically literally thousands of tens of thousands of the college students have had this idea before some of them have made it into an app and like why are you not using the app basically another common idea that people have is like oh man like it's so hard to find good restaurants in my town or city like whatever there was an app that helped you find better restaurants or something and usually like that idea like has been tried and hasn't worked for like the last 5 10 years and it's usually because of some like physical constraint in the real world in the sense that are a finite number of restaurants in this City and if there isn't like a good way of finding good restaurants in your city it doesn't mean that there should be an app for it means that like there just aren't good restaurants in your city like often these ideas are called topit ideas and topit ideas has been covered on before on the Y commity YouTube channel so I would recommend watching that video but basically like for many people the why now nowadays is AI like a significant development has happened in AI that has made something that was previously impossible now possible which is why you see most why combinated companies focused on AI and AI agents and everything like that these days whereas like 10 15 years ago many companies would be focused on mobile apps for example because the iPhone came out the mobile app store was possible and people could make mobile apps and then it was focused on like cloud and Cloud infrastructure because cloud like services like Google Cloud AWS and so forth started taking off so whatever technological Trend that makes something now possible or like technological development there's often a good y now another good y now is often like regulation of like some law change in your country that now requires this certain thing to happen and therefore that requires some new software to be developed and then you can be the ones to develop that software so I would recommend watching Gary Tan's video on why now to begin and a final tip I have

for the interview is to teach them something new if possible or if it's irrelevant to you so for example like they may not know everything about your market and all the new ideas and regulations and stuff that have come out so for example if you're making like a payment processor for Indonesia and Indonesia recently introduced a new law that requires like X Y and Z they are unlikely to know about this new law unless they specialize in like payments infrastructure around southeast Asia they likely won't know about that new law so you would have to mention it like spell it out for them in the interview and that goes back to importance of clarity like you want to be clear in terms of how everything links back and like links to the bigger picture here or it might even be the case that you're working on a healthcare app and like a new policy has been rolled out across all the hospitals in your country that requires one particular thing and they are likely to know about this like thing that has rolled out so you have to mention it and you have to like talk about how it leads onto your product so I think it's quite good to teach him about something new which is like a new why now if possible and I think her final point in the

interview is to like actually take turns talking like it might be the case that one person ends up talking like 95% of the time and the other person says like 5% of stuff and that's kind of weird because it kind of like suggests that one person's like a Cod monkey or like they're not really doing anything and one person is doing everything like ideally 50/50 but you don't want to be about it and be like oh it's your 10 T the question now or it's your 10 now like taking turns like basically it should feel much more natural but the point is you don't want to be in the extreme case where like one person has basically answered every single question in the interview and the other person

said nothing so yeah I would recommend watching the videos that I linked down below and actually look in the official videos this is just one applicant's like video like perspective and applying and getting in and yeah like make progress on the application form like if you get rejected make more progress on your like startup or app and then like apply again and if you get rejected like you can apply as many times as you want here and as long as you made progress between each application applying each time then like it looks really good because if you make no progress on your idea and you're reapplying with the same idea then it seems kind of suspicious but if you made more progress in like the sense you have like 50 paying users now you have 100 paying users then it basically shows that you're able to make progress without them and I think from their perspective it's like if we accept them and they're making progress like at this rate like we will help them make progress even faster by making their products even better and like giving them more advice and the connection and network and everything like that instead so I think that's very promising if you're able to make progress in between each reapplication that you make