Y Combinator Startup Podcast

Andrej Karpathy: Software Is Changing (Again)

<p>Andrej Karpathy's keynote at AI Startup School in San Francisco.Drawing on his work at Stanford, OpenAI, and Tesla, Andrej sees a shift underway. Software is changing, again. We’ve entered the era of “Software 3.0,” where natural language becomes the new programming interface and models do the rest.He explores what this shift means for developers, users, and the design of software itself— that we're not just using new tools, but building a new kind of computer.</p><p><br /></p><p>Slides provided by Andrej: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1a0h1mkwfmV2PlekxDN8isMrDA5evc4wW/view?usp=sharing</p>

Cursor CEO: Going Beyond Code, Superintelligent AI Agents And Why Taste Still Matters

<p>Michael Truell, co-founder and CEO of Anysphere, the company behind Cursor, joins Garry to talk about building one of the fastest-growing startups of all time—and why he&#39;s betting on a future beyond code. He walks through the early insights that led his team to leave a promising AI-powered CAD project and instead chase a bigger dream: reinventing how software is written. From years of false starts and rewrites to Cursor&#39;s breakthrough moment, Michael explains what it takes to build a tool that could eventually replace programming as we know it. He also reflects on their first 10 hires, why taste still matters and how the decade ahead will unlock a new kind of creativity for builders everywhere.</p>

Fusion Energy Is Tech's Next Big Unlock

<p>Fusion may still sound like science fiction— but it might not be for much longer. With AI pushing demand for clean power to new highs, a breakthrough may finally be close.</p><p><br></p><p>For Decoded, YC General Partner Gustaf Alstromer traces the history of fusion, the physics behind it, and the engineering challenges that stalled it for nearly a century. </p><p><br></p><p>He also looks at how Helion is approaching the problem differently, as they develop a new fusion system expected to deliver power to Microsoft by 2028.</p>

AI Apps Are Broken — Here's How To Fix Them

<p>In this episode of The Breakdown, Tom and Dave are joined by fellow YC General Partner Pete Koomen to lay out a new vision for how AI should actually work: not as a chatbot bolted onto legacy software, but as a customizable tool that helps people offload the work they don&#39;t want to do. </p><p>From editable system prompts to agents that act more like collaborators, they dig into what it means to build AI-native software—and why the future belongs to products that let users teach machines how to think.</p>

How AI Coding Agents Will Change Your Job

<p>Coding agents are no longer a distant idea—they&#39;re already starting to reshape how we work.</p><p><br></p><p>YC&#39;s Tom Blomfield and David Lieb discuss how AI coding tools are transforming software development, why small, high-agency teams will be able to do what once took armies of engineers, and why there&#39;s never been a better time to start something new. </p><p><br></p><p>They explore the bigger picture too: a future where there&#39;s abundance, knowledge work becomes more accessible, and founders have more leverage than ever before.</p><p><br></p><p>If you&#39;re thinking about building, there&#39;s no better moment than right now.</p>

How To Get The Most Out Of Vibe Coding | Startup School

<p>AI can&#39;t yet one-shot an entire product—but with the rise of vibe coding, it&#39;s getting close. YC&#39;s Tom Blomfield has spent the last month building side projects with tools like Claude Code, Windsurf, and Aqua, seeing just how far you can push modern LLMs. From writing full-stack apps to debugging with a single paste of an error message, AI is becoming a legit collaborator in the dev process. This is a playbook for anyone who wants to get the most out of vibe coding and build faster.</p>

How Zepto Became India’s Fastest Growing Startup

<p>Imagine ordering groceries and having them show up at your doorstep in just 10 minutes. That’s the promise of Zepto, the fastest-growing e-commerce company in India. </p><p><br></p><p>In this episode of How To Build The Future, Garry sits down with Aadit Palicha, the co-founder and CEO of Zepto, to discuss how they got started in a Whatsapp group, what it’s like going up against incumbents like Amazon and Zomato and how the future of e-commerce is changing in the age of intelligence. </p>

Why America Stopped Innovating - And How We Can Start Again

<p>Not long ago, America led the world in building and innovation. But over the past 50 years, bureaucracy and red tape have made it nearly impossible to get big things done.</p><p><br></p><p>Still, there’s a growing movement to turn that around — to build faster, smarter, and better than ever before.</p><p><br></p><p>In this episode of The Main Function, Garry sits down with Atlantic staff writer and Plain English podcast host Derek Thompson to discuss his new book Abundance (co-authored with Ezra Klein). They discuss how we got here, what needs fixing, and what a bold, more prosperous 2050 could look like.</p>

What Founders Can Do To Improve Their Design Game

<p>In this special episode of Design Review, Aaron sits down with Raphael Schaad, the Head of Calendar at Notion to discuss his leap from designer to founder, why illustration is an important first step when building a new product, and what ultimately makes designers uniquely qualified to start a company today.</p>

How to Build the Future: Tony Xu

<p>12 years after starting DoorDash, co-founder &amp; CEO Tony Xu and his employees still do deliveries every year, staying true to their core value: customer obsession.</p><p><br></p><p>Today, DoorDash is the largest food delivery platform in the US.</p><p><br></p><p>In this episode of How to Build the Future, Tony explains how their unwavering long-term vision won — helping create a new market while surviving near death and a global pandemic along the way.</p>

Customer Obsession Made Gusto A $9.6 Billion Company

<p>Gusto (https://gusto.com) made payroll and HR painless for small businesses, growing into a $9.6B company along the way. </p><p><br></p><p>Co-founder &amp; CEO Josh Reeves joined YC&#39;s Harj Taggar to share how they built a payroll company from scratch and their customer-first approach to product design and culture.</p>

The Future Of Design With Figma's Dylan Field

<p>Design isn’t just about making things work—it’s about how they work, says Dylan Field, the co-founder &amp; CEO of Figma.<br>As AI transforms tech, he believes a designer&#39;s judgment, taste, and agency will matter more than ever.</p><p><br></p><p>Dylan sat down with YC&#39;s Garry Tan to discuss the evolving world of design in the age of AI, the challenging early days at Figma, and how his team forever changed the way designers and engineers collaborate.</p>

How To Build The Future: Aravind Srinivas

<p>YC General Partner David Lieb sits down with Aravind Srinivas, the co-founder and CEO of Perplexity, to discuss his origins in Silicon Valley, what it&#39;s like to compete with Google, and what the future of search could look like.</p><p><br></p><p>Apply to Y Combinator: https://ycombinator.com/apply</p>

Building A Supersonic Plane Company From The Ground Up

<p>Imagine flying from NY to London in just a few hours. That’s the future that Blake Scholl and his team at Boom Supersonic are working towards. </p><p><br></p><p>Blake started as a software engineer and pivoted mid-career to aviation. Now, he’s at the forefront of trying to bring back supersonic travel for all of us. </p><p><br></p><p>In this episode of Hard Tech, YC’s Jared Friedman visited Blake in the Mojave desert to find out how someone who didn’t have a background in aerospace engineering was able to build the first-ever independently developed supersonic plane.</p>

The Right (And Wrong) Way To Spend Money At Your Startup

<p>Many startups fail because they run out of money. So how should you think about how to spend the money you raise?</p><p><br></p><p>In this episode of Office Hours, YC General Partners Brad Flora, Pete Koomen, Nicolas Dessaigne, and Gustaf Alströmer discuss how to spend responsibly at each stage of a startup— including advice on when to hire, whether to invest in marketing and what spending mistakes to avoid.</p><p><br></p><p>Apply to Y Combinator: https://ycombinator.com/apply</p>

How To Build The AGI Future: Bob McGrew

<p>According to OpenAI&#39;s former Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew, reasoning and test-time compute will unlock more reliable and capable AI agents— and a path to scale to AGI.</p> <p><br></p> <p>In this episode of How to Build the Future, YC&#39;s @garrytan sits down with Bob to discuss the lessons learned from his time at OpenAI, scaling laws, his advice for startups, and what all of this means for the jobs of the future.</p>

How To Use AI In Your Startup

<p>AI continues to improve at an exponential pace. So what can you do as a founder to take advantage of it? </p> <p><br /></p> <p>In this episode of Office Hours, YC Partners discuss what you should consider if you’re thinking about pivoting to or incorporating AI as part of your startup. </p>

How To Build The Future: Parker Conrad

<p>In this episode of How to Build the Future, Garry sits down with Parker Conrad, Co-founder &amp; CEO of Rippling, the all-in-one HR, Finance, and IT software company that’s valued at $13.5 billion. </p> <p>Parker is the co-founder of two unicorns and has one of the more dramatic startup journeys in recent years. In this interview, he shares his origin story, the lessons learned from his first two companies, how AI is changing the game, and why he thinks the future will be defined by "compound" software startups.</p>

Building A $2 Billion SaaS Company: Lessons From A Two Time Founder

<p>Two-time founder Rujul Zaparde knows a thing or two about resilience and learning from failure. </p><p>After dropping out of college to build FlightCar, he worked as a PM at Airbnb, and later as a visiting partner at YC. </p><p>In 2020, he co-founded Zip, a procurement software company that has since raised $370 million and reached a $2.2 billion valuation. </p><p>In this conversation with YC's Dalton Caldwell, Rujul demystifies the world of enterprise sales, shares his hard-earned lessons about scaling a business from zero, and explains how founders can use first-principles thinking to better approach the challenges of building a startup.</p>

How David Lieb Turned A Failed Startup Into Google Photos | Backstory

<p>YC General Partner David Lieb’s story is all about perseverance. In 2008 he co-founded Bump, one of the hottest startups of the early iPhone era. But even with 150 million users, he couldn’t find a way to create a sustainable business. For many founders, that would be the end of the road. But he didn’t quit there. Instead, David and his team pivoted several times, got acquired, and eventually went on to build Google Photos. </p> <p><br /></p> <p>In this episode of Backstory, he shares his advice for finding the right idea, what mistakes to avoid, and how to maintain a positive mindset no matter what gets thrown at you.</p>

How To Start A Dev Tools Company with Nicolas Dessaigne | Startup School

<p>YC's Nicolas Dessaigne was the co-founder and CEO of @algolia, a Search API used by millions of developers to build great search experiences into their apps and websites. Today it powers over 1.75 trillion searches annually for 17,000+ customers worldwide.</p> <p><br /></p> <p>In this episode of Startup School, @dessaigne shares his advice for founders building a dev tools company from the ground up— covering everything from team and idea to GTM and sales.</p>

Twitter vs. X: Product Lessons For Startup Founders | The Breakdown

<p>Since Twitter rebranded to X, the platform has added new features and implemented a few major updates to both its UX and algo. So what can founders interested in product design learn from all this? In the first episode of our new series, The Breakdown, YC’s Tom Blomfield (co-founder of Monzo) and David Lieb (creator of Google Photos) take a closer look at X to find what lessons there are for founders building consumer products.</p>

How To Build The Future: Sam Altman

<p>It’s fair to say that few people in tech are positioned to have a bigger impact on the future than Sam Altman. At OpenAI, Sam and his team have overseen monumental leaps forward in machine learning, generative AI, and most recently, LLMs that can reason at PhD levels. And this is just the beginning. In his latest essay Sam predicted that ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence) is just a few thousand days away. So how did we get to this point? </p> <p>In this episode of our rebooted series "How To Build The Future," YC President and CEO Garry Tan sits down with Sam to talk about the origins of OpenAI, what’s next for the company, and what advice he has for founders navigating this massive platform shift.</p>

How Do Billion Dollar Startups Start? | Office Hours

<p>The biggest companies in the world all had to start somewhere. In this episode of Office Hours, the Group Partners explore the humble origins of several top YC companies to try and identify common traits of the most successful founders. They’ll explore what it takes to keep your company alive in the early days, where to focus your energy and how to find product market fit that leads you to mega success. </p>

Why Design Matters: Lessons from Stripe, Lyft and Airbnb | Design Review

<p>Stripe, Airbnb and Lyft are a few of the most successful companies of the past decade. And there are at least two things they all have in common - great design, and Katie Dill. Katie was Head of Experience Design at Airbnb, led the design team at Lyft and is now Head of Design at Stripe. We spoke with Katie about her design philosophy, what sets companies like Stripe apart, and how important it is to instill a culture of design in your startup from day one.</p>

How To Find A Co-Founder with Harj Taggar | Startup School

<p>Building a startup and trying to break into an established market is very difficult, especially if you’re trying to do it alone! That’s why it’s critical to find the right co-founder for the journey. In this episode of Startup School, YC Group Partner Harj Taggar explains why you need a co-founder, when to bring them on, where you can find one and how to maintain the relationship.</p>

How To Convert Customers With Cold Emails with Aaron Epstein | Startup School

<p>Whether it's for sales, recruiting or making new connections, cold outreach is a necessary tool for helping build your startup. But as you probably know, most cold emails either are ignored or end up in the trash. So what can you do to make sure your emails break through the noise? In this episode of Startup School, YC Group Partner Aaron Epstein shares expert advice on how to write cold emails that have all the right ingredients to get noticed and convert new customers. </p>

How To Improve Cohort Retention with David Lieb | Startup School

<p>At YC our motto is make something people want. But how do you actually know if you’ve accomplished that in the early days? One of the best ways to measure successful growth is a concept called cohort retention, which tracks the fraction of new users that come back time and time again to use your product. In this episode of Startup School, YC Group Partner David Lieb explains how to define cohorts, track active users and determine the appropriate time frame for measuring successful retention rates.</p>

Co-Founder Equity Mistakes to Avoid with Michael Seibel | Startup School

<p>In order to get your startup off the ground it's critical to keep your co-founders motivated. One of the best ways to do that is to figure out a fair co-founder equity split. In this episode of Startup School, YC Group Partner Michael Seibel explains the ins and outs of co-founder equity, why it's important to be generous with that equity, and how to avoid bad advice that can lead to co-founder breakups.</p>

How Nothing Founder Carl Pei Built A Multi-Million Dollar Smartphone Brand In Just 2 Years | Main Function

<p>After co-founding the successful Chinese smartphone maker OnePlus, Carl Pei felt the tech industry was missing the fun and wonder he remembered as a dedicated gadget fan growing up in Sweden. Pei decided to launch a new smartphone brand, this time with an increased focus on thoughtful user interface and stylish yet practical designs. In only two years, the brand known as "Nothing" has gained a cult following and gone to $600 million in annualized revenue. On this episode of The Main Function, Pei reflects on the highs and lows that have come with the journey of pursuing excellence in hard tech.</p>