Startups follow a 'minimum viable product' strategy to determine demand

Startup accelerators offer mentorship and seed funding in exchange for equity

Those programs, such as Y Combinator and Techstars, not only offer expert advice to founders, but also seed funding in exchange for equity. The goal is to help young startups learn from successful companies, making it more likely they attract venture capital.

Startup accelerators that include more training activities, such as pitch competitions, tend to have better long-term success rates

That's according to a new study from Wharton. Y-Combinator, perhaps the most famous startup accelerator, currently has 16 alumni companies trading on the public market. But not every entrepreneur who joins a startup accelerator makes it big.

Y Combinator changed the way startups around the world are built

Many of the philosophies that the leaders of Y Combinator have infused into the program’s portfolio companies have become the playbook for building the next big thing, such as its focus on founder personality and more.

Product-market fit is achieved when a product strongly satisfies market demand

Some experts argue that product-market fit is what separates the most successful startups from those that never get off the ground. While there isn’t an official rule book for how to optimize and test product-market fit, the CEO of email startup Superhuman has attempted to provide one with a specific four-step process.

Y Combinator, the startup accelerator, gets its name from the 'Y combinator' computer science concept.

The 50-100-500 rule: when a startup is no longer a startup

According to startup expert Alex Wilhelm, a company cannot be considered a startup if it generates revenue exceeding $50M, employs more than 100 people, and has a valuation of $500M or more. However, Wilhelm modified the rule in 2018 to $100M in revenue, over 500 employees, and a valuation of $2.5B or more.

Stanford’s ‘How to Start a Startup’ series

Stanford’s archive of lectures about creating a startup includes advice from Y Combinator notables such as former YC president and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and YC Cofounder Paul Graham.

Y Combinator was founded in 2005 to bridge gaps between founders and investors

In one of Paul Graham’s essays on his website, he took the time to explain how and why he and his cofounders (including his girlfriend at the time, and now wife, Jessica Livingston), came up with the idea of and eventually created Y Combinator.

Elon Musk follows a five-step decision-making process when simplifying technology

He begins by determining whether how something has been previously done is—in his words—"dumb," or if a certain feature should even exist, let alone be optimized. This first principles method has helped him develop some of the most valuable companies in the world.

‘Demo days’ are when founders at Y Combinator pitch their startup ideas

Investors sit in the audience, waiting to hear what this season’s batch of YC founders have cooked up. YC argues that going through the process of a demo day can help founders get a better understanding of their startup themselves.

Working at a startup isn't for everyone, and is often more fast-paced than a run-of-the-mill job

Some argue that ideal startup employees have to be better than the average worker at managing uncertainty, acting with an "ownership" mindset rather than being a cog in the machine, and pushing limits.

'Startups' can be defined as small, early-stage companies that are designed to grow fast.

Unlike small businesses, startups aim to disrupt entire industries

They also differ from small businesses in that startups have a higher level of risk, may take on outside funding from venture capital firms to boost growth, and more.

Startups fundraise in 'rounds' as they prove out their business and scale

When startups take on outside funding, those investments are divided into different "rounds." These rounds are catered to different stages in a startup's life cycle—a startup often needs different types of investors and amounts of funding at different stages of the business. For instance, a pre-seed investment round can include investments ranging from about $25K to $500K, whereas a Series D investment can be hundreds of millions of dollars.

Listen to a podcast episode where Y Combinator CEO Gary Tan explains why YC tends to outperform many other Silicon Valley startup accelerators.

Many startup founders pull out-of-the-box stunts to get their businesses off the ground.

Venture capital is a type of financing that firms and funds use to invest in startups they believe have the potential for long-term growth

Household name companies such as Airbnb and Uber might not exist without venture capital, which is commonly referred to as "VC" for short.

The Y Combinator startup directory includes every company YC has funded

The startup accelerator has funded more than 5,000 companies over the years. This YC-specific search engine lets you look up any company to find out if it's a YC alum.

Find out how venture capitalists make decisions

More than 30% of venture capital deals come from leads courtesy of a VC’s former colleagues or professional network. You can learn more about how venture capitalists decide which companies to invest in by reading this article.

YC was partly inspired by an investor named Julian Weber

Y Combinator Cofounder Paul Graham’s former professor’s husband Julian Weber provided $10K in seed funding to Graham’s previous startup, Viaweb in its early days. In exchange, Weber received 10% of the company. Weber’s involvement inspired Graham to start a program where investors were more involved with the companies they contributed seed funding to.

Dive deep into the numbers that shape each YC deal

Y Combinator invests $500K into each company in any given batch. $125K of that investment converts into a fixed 7% in ownership of the startup, and the other $375K is invested on something called an uncapped MFN safe. YC explains what that means and more terms of the deal in a detailed article on their website

Y Combinator has a roughly 1% acceptance rate

That’s lower than the most elite universities and colleges in the world—but insiders have some tips about how applicants can have the best shot of being accepted to the selective startup accelerator.

According to some estimates, roughly 75% of venture-backed startups fail, making startups inherently risky ventures.

'Founder mode' is the idea that startup founders should take a hands-on approach to running their businesses

In 2024, Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham popularized the idea of "founder mode" when he wrote a viral manifesto in response to a talk that Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky gave about leadership styles. Graham positioned the concept of founder mode as the opposite of manager mode—when founders hire executives and middle managers to run their companies and make decisions that Graham says are better left to founders.

Explore Bessemer's anti-portfolio of missed opportunities

From Pinterest to Yelp, Bessemer Venture Partners—one of the most well-known VC firms—has invested in many successful companies over the years. But the firm has also kicked itself for passing on a few great opportunities, like Apple and Google. Check out the other companies in Bessemer's "anti-portfolio" here.

'Founder mode' is the idea that founders should take a hands-on approach to running their businesses

In 2024, Y Combinator Cofounder Paul Graham wrote a viral manifesto of sorts about a strategy he calls "founder mode." It's the opposite of what Graham calls "manager mode," which allows founders to hire executives who he says ultimately run the company into the ground.

80% of a VC firm's returns come from 20% of the deals, per VC's 'power law'

Early-stage startups are highly risky investments. Many companies in a VC portfolio will not provide any significant return.

The term 'startup'—which is typically used to describe private companies in their early stages of operation that focus on innovating new products or services to meet a market gap—can be traced back to a 1976 Forbes article.

Angel investors typically fund a startup at an earlier stage than venture capitalists

Angel investors and venture capitalists both invest in startups, but they differ in a few key ways. Angel investors typically invest earlier and in a smaller amount.

Legendary venture capitalist Peter Thiel once wrote that 'competition is for losers'

With Peter Thiel's "Monopoly Theory," the Founders Fund partner argued that investing in companies that create new categories, rather than those that compete with other businesses in existing ones, is a best practice in venture capital.

Read Paul Graham’s initial post announcing YC’s first batch

In March 2005, Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham announced the program that would become Y Combinator on his website.

Explore the schedule of a three-month YC batch

During the three months that founders accepted into Y Combinator spend on YC’s California campus, they receive mentorship from YC partners, networking opportunities, and, overall, a ton of time to build and scale their companies.

Venture capital explained through Lego bricks

Seed funding is often the first round of capital that a startup raises

Early-stage startups often try to secure seed funding from investors in order to take their idea from concept to reality.

See the anatomy of a venture capital firm

Venture capital firms get the money they use to invest in companies from limited partners, also called LPs. It’s the general partner’s job to manage that money and invest it in the right startups.

Mark Zuckerberg credits some of Facebook's success to constant evolution

Before becoming the head of OpenAI, Sam Altman was the president of Y Combinator—a startup accelerator company that supported companies like Airbnb, DoorDash, and Coinbase. In 2016, Altman interviewed Zuckerberg about creating Facebook and its growth over time. Zuckerberg said that, unlike other companies (think: CourseMatch), Facebook kept growing and adding new features, which prevented the app from becoming obsolete.

Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham keeps a public archive of his insightful essays

In addition to cofounding Y Combinator and other companies before it, Paul Graham is a prolific writer and artist. He chronicled many of his thoughts while building Y Combinator in a series of dozens of candid essays, all of which you can read in an online archive.

Watch the DoorDash team's YC application video

In 2013, the cofounders of DoorDash created a simple, homemade video application to Y Combinator. They didn't know it at the time, but they'd be accepted—and their company would go on to be publicly traded on the NASDAQ.

SPACs, explained

Special purpose acquisition companies make it easy for mature unicorns (companies valued at over $1B) to receive growth capital by going public. This process effectively skips the work of a traditional initial public offering, and its time-intensive investor negotiations. Typically, a well-known investor with expertise in a certain industry sponsors a SPAC with the intent to acquire a startup. Learn how it works and the risks involved here.

The infrastructure, talent, and markets of Silicon Valley make the high-tech region ideal for startups

The number of startup employees, founders, and investors who have flocked to Silicon Valley over the years makes the California region ideal for networking in the tech space. Plus, California’s laws and specific rules around trade secrets help founders of fledgling businesses in Silicon Valley feel protected.

Many startups in a variety of industries try to reframe themselves as 'tech companies'

Tech is still the dominant industry for startups—in part due to its low barriers to entry, high growth potential, investor preferences, and the proliferation of tech into a wide variety of industries. Sweetgreen, the fast-casual salad chain, for instance, has often referred to itself as a tech company.

Elon Musk's will to launch: the early days of SpaceX

Radically reducing the cost of rockets and innovating totally new space vehicles originated in the singular force of Elon Musk's vision. In this podcast, Founders creator David Senra shares what he learned reading a book about SpaceX's beginnings, highlighting Musk's audacious refusal to follow industry conventions and promotion of a culture of action and speed. Learn more insights from the founder here.

Stanford and Harvard are among the universities producing the most startup founders

Not all startup founders are created equal. This data visualization of the universities that produce the most startup founders is based on the number of alumni who have raised venture capital funding for their companies. That means these alums had to do much more than put "entrepreneur" in their LinkedIn bio to be considered startup founders.

How venture capital firms came to be

The venture capital firm that kickstarted an industry.

Microsoft's initial successes came from promising products that did not yet exist

In discussions with teams responsible for MITS's Altair 8800 and IBM's PC, Bill Gates and Paul Allen claimed to have created ready-to-use software. Code for the former was not completed until Paul Allen's flight to MITS' headquarters, where the software was successfully tested for the first time.

Platforms like AngelList help angel investors find startups to fund

Angel investors leverage their high net worths to fund seed-stage startups. While they could see high returns, investing in such an early company is a risk.

A startup is trying to create the diamond equivalent of the gold standard

It's called the Diamond Standard Co, and it uses an algorithm to assign standard values to a variety off small diamonds, grouping them together into individual coins. Historically, diamonds haven't been able to be classified as commodities or standardized like gold because they aren't uniform—factors such as clarity, cut, color, and carat size significantly influence the value of a diamond.

Angel investors often receive significant equity because of the risk they take

Angel investors fund startups at an early stage, at which time a company’s success is less assured. In exchange, they often ask for a significant equity stake.

87% of the startups in Y Combinator’s Fall 2025 batch were AI companies

Y Combinator also recently increased its number of cohorts or “batches” per year from two to four. Its leaders cited artificial intelligence’s rise as a reason for the increase.

Many startups now have shoes-off policies

This website keeps track of startups with "no-shoes" offices so you can browse a list of barefoot companies—plus, see which of them are hiring.