Y Combinator Startup Podcast cover art

All Episodes

Y Combinator Startup Podcast — 334 episodes

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Title
1

Chelsea Finn: This is the State of the Art in Robotics

2

Peter Steinberger: "Fun Is Velocity"

3

Max Hodak: How Startups Build Speed

4

How To Design In The Agent Era

5

Garry Tan: Own Your Intelligence

6

Building the First Data Centers in Space

7

Waymo Co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov: "Move Fast And Ship Safely"

8

Patrick Collison: "What If You Succeed?"

9

Jeff Dean: The 1% Rule for Building in AI

10

Alexandr Wang: “This is a Once-in-a-Civilization Opportunity”

11

Blake Scholl: Breaking the Supersonic Ban

12

Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup"

13

Boris Cherny: Building Claude Code

14

Jensen Huang: The Mindset That Built NVIDIA

15

World Models, Explained

16

How To Better Understand Your Users

17

Why Domain Experts Are Winning In The Age Of AI

18

How To Pick A Startup Idea

19

"The CEO Must Be the Chief AI Officer"

20

How to Build an AI-Native Services Company

21

How To Build Superintelligence Inside Your Company

22

How The Best Companies Defend Against Mediocrity And Rot

23

Paul Graham: Should you move to Silicon Valley?

24

Tokenmaxxing: How Top Builders Use AI To Do The Work Of 400 Engineers

25

Beyond Bigger Models: Recursion As The Next Scaling Law In AI

26

How to Build the Future: Demis Hassabis

27

The $9B Startup That Wants to Create a Billion New Developers

28

The Playbook For Building An AI Native Company

29

Stripe Head of Design Katie Dill Breaks Down Their New Website

30

The GPT Moment for Robotics Is Here

31

This Startup Wants To Catch Cancer Before It Spreads

32

This Startup Secretly Detects Fraud For Fortune 500s

33

How François Chollet Is Building A New Path To AGI

34

Inside The Startup Reinventing America’s Trillion Dollar Chemical Industry

35

Building A Global AI Startup From India

36

The Future Of Brain-Computer Interfaces with Science's Max Hodak

37

How To Avoid AI Design Slop

38

The Fastest Path To Super Intelligence

39

The AI Agent Economy Is Here

40

Inside Claude Code With Its Creator Boris Cherny

41

The New Way To Build A Startup

42

OpenClaw And The Future Of Personal AI Agents

43

We're All Addicted To Claude Code

44

How To Get Your First Customers

45

Inside The Startup Building Reusable Rockets

46

What Surprised Us Most In 2025

47

How Intelligent Is AI, Really?

48

The End of the Designer–Engineer Divide

49

From Pivot Hell To $1.4 Billion Unicorn

50

The Best Consumer Startup Ideas Were "Impossible" Until Now

51

Cursor Head of Design Reviews Startup Websites

52

Inside The Startup Launching AI Into Space

53

How To Recruit The Best Engineers And Sales Reps

54

From Idea to $650M Exit: Lessons in Building AI Startups

55

Transformers: The Discovery That Sparked the AI Revolution

56

YC Partners Answer Your Questions | Office Hours

57

What Everyone Is Getting Wrong About AI And Jobs

58

How To Design Products That Truly Stand Out

59

The World's First Commercial Mobile Carbon Capture Device

60

Every AI Founder Should Be Asking These Questions

61

Anthropic Head of Pretraining on Scaling Laws, Compute, and the Future of AI

62

Fintech 3.0: Now Is The Best Time To Build In Crypto

63

Aaron Levie: Why Startups Win In The AI Era

64

The Future of Software Creation with Replit CEO Amjad Masad

65

The FDE Playbook for AI Startups with Bob McGrew

66

Michael Truell: Building Cursor at 23, Taking on GitHub Copilot, and Advice to Engineering Students

67

GPT-OSS vs. Qwen vs. Deepseek: Comparing Open Source LLM Architectures

68

How This 25-Year-Old Built A $675M Legal AI Startup (With No Legal Experience)

69

The Sales Playbook for Founders | Startup School

70

Figma CEO Dylan Field: How AI Will Transform Design

71

The Finance Startup Bringing Agentic AI to Wall Street

72

Scaling and the Road to Human-Level AI | Anthropic Co-founder Jared Kaplan

73

Brand Design Tips From Linear Founder Karri Saarinen

74

Chelsea Finn: Building Robots That Can Do Anything

75

Replit CEO Amjad Masad: Coding Agents, Autonomy, and the Future of Work

76

John Jumper: AlphaFold and the Future of Science

77

Aravind Srinivas: The Race to Build the AI Browser of the Future

78

Andrew Ng: Building Faster with AI

79

François Chollet: The ARC Prize & How We Get to AGI

80

Fei-Fei Li: Spatial Intelligence is the Next Frontier in AI

81

Legendary Consumer VC Predicts The Future Of AI Products

82

Satya Nadella: Microsoft's AI Bets, Hyperscaling, Quantum Computing Breakthroughs

83

Sam Altman: The Future of OpenAI, ChatGPT's Origins, and Building AI Hardware

84

Elon Musk: Digital Superintelligence, Multiplanetary Life, How to Be Useful

85

Andrej Karpathy: Software Is Changing (Again)

86

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

87

Fusion Energy Is Tech's Next Big Unlock

88

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

89

How AI Coding Agents Will Change Your Job

90

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

91

How Zepto Became India’s Fastest Growing Startup

92

Why America Stopped Innovating - And How We Can Start Again

93

What Founders Can Do To Improve Their Design Game

94

How to Build the Future: Tony Xu

95

Customer Obsession Made Gusto A $9.6 Billion Company

96

The Future Of Design With Figma's Dylan Field

97

How To Build The Future: Aravind Srinivas

98

Building A Supersonic Plane Company From The Ground Up

99

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

100

How To Build The AGI Future: Bob McGrew

101

How To Use AI In Your Startup

102

How To Build The Future: Parker Conrad

103

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

104

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

105

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

106

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

107

How To Build The Future: Sam Altman

108

How Do Billion Dollar Startups Start? | Office Hours

109

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

110

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

111

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

112

How To Improve Cohort Retention with David Lieb | Startup School

113

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

114

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

115

How To Price For B2B with Tom Blomfield | Startup School

116

Why Startup Founders Should Launch Companies Sooner Than They Think | Office Hours

117

Enterprise Sales with Pete Koomen | Startup School

118

Startup Experts Discuss Doing Things That Don't Scale | Office Hours

119

How to Survive the Crypto Boom & Bust Cycle | Main Function

120

Consumer Startup Metrics with Tom Blomfield | Startup School

121

When Should You Trust Your Gut? | Dalton & Michael Podcast

122

Building Confidence In Yourself and Your Ideas | Dalton & Michael Podcast

123

Stop Innovating (On The Wrong Things) | Dalton & Michael Podcast

124

Should Your Startup Bootstrap or Raise Venture Capital? | Dalton & Michael Podcast

125

How To Build A Tech Startup With No Technical Skills | Dalton & Michael Podcast

126

B2B Startup Metrics with Tom Blomfield | Startup School

127

Should You Be Optimistic About The Future of Technology? | Dalton & Michael Podcast

128

AI and the Future of Law: The 10 Year "Overnight" Success Story | Main Function

129

How To NOT Get Screwed As A Software Engineer | Dalton & Michael Podcast

130

Should You Quit Your Job At A Unicorn? | Dalton & Michael Podcast

131

Does Your Startup Need To Be In San Francisco?

132

Will OpenAI Kill All Startups?

133

Silicon Valley's Cargo Culting Problem

134

Setting KPIs and Goals with Divya Bhat | Startup School

135

Tips For Technical Startup Founders | Startup School

136

Secrets You Can Learn From Your Customers

137

The Student's Guide To Becoming A Successful Startup Founder

138

Inside The Most Powerful Startup Community In The World

139

How Startup Fundraising Works with Brad Flora | Startup School

140

How to Build An MVP with Michael Seibel | Startup School

141

How To Earn Customers For Life

142

The REAL Potential of Generative AI

143

The Hard Conversations Founders Don't Want to Have

144

The Best Way To Launch Your Startup with Kat Mañalac | Startup School

145

Advantages Of A First-Time Founder

146

The Cult of Conformity in Silicon Valley

147

Don't Make These Hiring Mistakes

148

Keys To Successful Co-Founder Relationships with Cat Li & Divya Bhat | Startup School

149

How To Compete With Amazon and Google

150

The Secrets To Setting Smarter Goals

151

Investors Said No, Now What?

152

When to Launch Your Startup and When to Wait

153

How to Get Your First Customers with Gustaf Alströmer | Startup School

154

Startup Business Models and Pricing with Aaron Epstein | Startup School

155

How to Talk to Users with Gustaf Alströmer | Startup School

156

How to Get and Evaluate Startup Ideas with Jared Friedman | Startup School

157

Should You Start a Startup? with Harj Taggar | Startup School

158

Avoid These Tempting Startup Ideas

159

The Truth About Y Combinator

160

The Two Mindsets That Can Kill Your Startup

161

What Basic Game Theory Teaches Us About Startups

162

Most Important Lifestyle Habits Of Successful Founders

163

Elon Musk & The Midwit Meme

164

Things That Don't Scale, The Software Edition

165

Why Investors (including YC) Can’t Fix Your Company

166

What Does It REALLY Mean To Do Things That Don't Scale?

167

How To Change The World? Get The Small Things Right

168

Simple Products That Became Big Companies

169

Where Do Great Startup Ideas Come From?

170

Successful Founders Are OK With Rejection

171

Should You Follow Your Passion?

172

Understanding Investor Terms & Incentives

173

YC Founders Made These Fundraising Mistakes

174

YC Founder Firesides: Gusto on building for new verticals

175

Co-Founder Mistakes That Kill Companies & How To Avoid Them

176

Dealing With Setbacks And The Startup Gut Punch

177

Saving Your Startup During an Economic Downturn

178

Why You Should Leave Your FAANG Job

179

How Future Billionaires Get Sh*t Done

180

#157 - Diego Saez Gil

181

#156 - Amber Atherton and Iba Masood

182

#155 - Laks Srini

183

#154 - Matt Cutts

184

#153 - Cory Doctorow and Joe Betts-LaCroix

185

#151 - Startup School Week 10 Recap - Ali Rowghani on How to Lead and Kevin Hale and Adora Cheung on Startup School 2019 by the Numbers

186

#150 - Startup School Week 9 Recap - Carolynn Levy on Modern Startup Financing and Jared Friedman’s Advice for Hard-tech and Biotech Founders

187

#149 - Startup School Week 8 Recap - Adora Cheung on Prioritizing Your Time and Kevin Hale on Evaluating Startup Ideas

188

#148 - Startup School Week 7 Recap - Kevin Hale on Conversion Rates and Pricing

189

#147 - Startup School Week 6 Recap - Tim Brady on Culture and Dalton Caldwell on Pivoting

190

#146 - Startup School Week 5 Recap - Kirsty Nathoo and Kevin Hale

191

#145 - Startup School Week 4 Recap - Kat Mañalac and Gustaf Alströmer

192

#144 - Startup School Week 3 Recap - Anu Hariharan and Adora Cheung

193

#143 - Startup School Week 2 Recap: Michael Seibel, Adora Cheung, and Ilya Volodarsky

194

#142 - Startup School Week 1 Recap: Kevin Hale and Eric Migicovsky

195

#141 - Diana Hu

196

#140 - Aaron Harris on Fundraising and Meeting with Investors

197

#139 - Jay Reno

198

#138 - Russ Roberts

199

#137 - Startup School Podcast Preview with Kevin Hale

200

#136 - Anu Hariharan on Managing a Board

201

#135 - Camille Fournier

202

#134 - Sarah Nahm and Holly Liu

203

#133 - Updates for Startup School 2019 and Office Hours with Kevin Hale

204

#132 - Dan Hockenmaier and Gustaf Alströmer

205

#131 - Jeremy Rossmann

206

#130 - Tracy Young and Kat Manalac

207

#129 - Simone Giertz

208

#128 - Michael Babineau and Kevin Hale

209

#127 - Vidit Aatrey and Adora Cheung

210

#126 - Chris Best and Jonathan Gill

211

#125 - Brian Halligan and Kevin Hale

212

#124 - Jarvis Johnson

213

#123 - Harry Zhang and Kevin Hale

214

#122 - Max Rhodes and Anu Hariharan

215

#120 - Austen Allred

216

#119 - Amy Buechler and Michael Seibel

217

#118 - Marques Brownlee

218

#117 - Craig Cannon and Adora Cheung

219

#116 - Domonique Fines and Cadran Cowansage

220

#115 - Mike Knoop and Kevin Hale

221

#114 - Karn Saroya

222

#113 - Caterina Fake and Kat Manalac

223

#112 - Ryan Hoover and Dalton Caldwell

224

#111 - Jake Klamka and Kevin Hale

225

#110 - Avni Patel Thompson and Kat Manalac

226

#109 - Samantha Bradshaw

227

#108 - Cindy Mi and Qi Lu

228

#107 - Vinod Khosla and Sam Altman

229

#106 - Frank Lantz

230

#105 - Reham Fagiri and Kalam Dennis

231

#104 - Leonard Susskind

232

#103 - Michael Seibel

233

#102 - Andrew Kortina

234

#101 - Brian Donohue

235

#100 - Sam Altman

236

#99 - Laura Deming

237

#98 - Shola Akinlade

238

#97 - David Hua and Vincent Ning

239

#96 - Mathilde Collin

240

#95 - Eli Schwartz

241

#94 - Joan Lasenby

242

#93 - Peter Reinhardt

243

#92 - Ryan Petersen

244

#91 - David Zeevi

245

#90 - Jessica Brillhart

246

#89 - Geoff Ralston and Adora Cheung Discuss Startup School

247

#88 - Office Hours with Michael Seibel

248

#87 - Elad Gil

249

#86 - Jocko Willink and Mike Sarraille

250

#85 - YC Partner AMA at the Female Founders Conference

251

#84 - João Batalha and Luís Batalha

252

#83 - Scott Aaronson

253

#82 - Henrique Dubugras of Brex and Anu Hariharan

254

#81 - Announcing Work at a Startup

255

#80 - Office Hours with Adora Cheung

256

#79 - Liz Wessel

257

#78 - Simon Benjamin

258

#77 - John Preskill

259

#76 - Carola Schönlieb

260

#75 - Sean Mitchell

261

#74 - Linda Xie and Avichal Garg

262

#73 - Patrick Moberg and Holly Liu

263

#72 - Miles Brundage and Tim Hwang

264

#71 - Claire McDonnell and Jennifer Kim on Building an Inclusive Company Culture

265

#70 - CoinList Cofounder Andy Bromberg and Ramon Recuero

266

#69 - Anne Wojcicki of 23andMe and Sam Altman

267

#68 - Cost vs Quality in Edtech - Keith Schacht, Avichal Garg, and Geoff Ralston

268

#67 - 3D Home Printing for the Developing World - Alexandria Lafci and Brett Hagler of New Story Charity

269

#66 - Breaking Down HackerRank's Survey of 40,000 Developers with Vivek Ravisankar

270

#65 - Funding Is an Outcome of Building a Good Business - Porter Braswell of Jopwell

271

#64 - Researching Psilocybin's Effects on Depression - Dr. Rosalind Watts

272

#63 - The Number One Goal is Getting Started - Avni Patel Thompson of Poppy

273

#62 - Dan Lewis, CEO of Convoy, on the Future of Freight

274

#61 - Sam Altman on Masters of Scale

275

#60 - Startup Investor School Preview with Geoff Ralston

276

#59 - Providing Fair Financial Products for the 56% of the US Without Access to Them - Jake Rosenberg of LendUp

277

#58 - It's Surprising How Much Small Teams Can Get Done - Sam Chaudhary of ClassDojo

278

#57 - Alex Blumberg of Gimlet Media

279

#56 - Leah Culver of Breaker and Tom Sparks of YC Answer Your Questions About Security and Podcasting

280

#55 - Tim Urban of Wait But Why

281

#54 - Growth Office Hours: Round 2

282

#53 - Be Wary of Solving a Small, Rare Problem - Des Traynor of Intercom

283

#52 - Making Physical Retail as Easy as Opening an Online Store - Ali Kriegsman and Alana Branston of Bulletin

284

#51 - There's an Art to Getting Brilliant People to Surprise Themselves - Kevin Slavin of The Shed

285

#50 - Growth Office Hours with Anu Hariharan and Gustaf Alstromer

286

#49 - Microbes, Robots, and Ambition - Robin Sloan on His Novel Sourdough

287

#48 - The Future of Bike Sharing with Ofo Cofounder Yanqi Zhang and Anu Hariharan

288

#47 - Baidu's COO, Qi Lu Discusses AI with Daniel Gross

289

#46 - Tencent's Chief eXploration Officer, David Wallerstein on WeChat, QQ, and Gaming

290

#45 - Building Dota Bots That Beat Pros - OpenAI's Greg Brockman, Szymon Sidor, and Sam Altman

291

#44 - Cindy Mi on Building VIPKID, the World's Largest English Learning Platform for Children

292

#43 - Casey Neistat and Matt Hackett on Live Video's Struggle for Interestingness

293

#42 - Robotics and 3D Printing with Voodoo Manufacturing

294

#41 - Experiments in Art and Technology with Artforum Editor Michelle Kuo

295

#40 - Content Marketing Tips from Experts at First Round Capital and Andreessen Horowitz

296

#39 - Mr. Robot's Technical Producer and Writer - Kor Adana

297

#38 - The More You Communicate with Users, the Higher Chance You'll Build Something They Want - Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt

298

#37 - Don't Start a Blog, Start a Cult - Mr. Money Mustache

299

#36 - Your Whole Goal Is to Not Quit - Courtland Allen of Indie Hackers

300

#35 - The Technical Challenges of Measuring Gravitational Waves - Rana Adhikari of LIGO

301

#34 - Elizabeth Iorns on Biotech Companies in YC

302

#33 - The Challenges a Repeat Founder Faces

303

#32 - Hosain Rahman on The "Defibrillator Experiences" of Jawbone

304

#31 - Spotting Ecommerce Trends in Shipping Data – Laura Behrens Wu

305

#30 - Artist Lauren McCarthy Will Be Your Home's Brain

306

#29 - Jack Dorsey On The Books That Helped Him Succeed

307

#28 - Prerequisites for Starting a Company - Phil Libin

308

#27 - The CEO Who Pays Employees to De-Locate From the Bay

309

#26 - Founders of Science Exchange, Goldbely, and The Flex Company Discuss Fundraising

310

#25 - Baidu's AI Lab Director on Advancing Speech Recognition and Simulation

311

#24 - Padmasree Warrior on Designing Autonomous Vehicles - With Anu Hariharan at the Female Founders Conference

312

#23 - VMware Cofounder Diane Greene with Jessica Livingston at the Female Founders Conference

313

#22 - Morgan DeBaun on Reaching 20M Millennials - With Kat Manalac at the Female Founders Conference

314

#21 - Emily Weiss on the Insights That Grew Glossier - With Amy Buechler at the Female Founders Conference

315

#20 - Making Music and Art Through Machine Learning - Doug Eck of Magenta

316

#19 - Blockchain Investing - Olaf Carlson-Wee and Aaron Harris

317

#18 - Q&A with YC Partners at the Female Founders Conference

318

#17 - Aileen Lee and Kirsty Nathoo at the Female Founders Conference

319

#16 - Mark Zuckerberg on How to Build the Future

320

#15 - IPFS, CoinList, and the Filecoin ICO - Juan Benet and Dalton Caldwell

321

#14 - Ex Machina's Scientific Advisor - Murray Shanahan

322

#13 - Scaling Growth - Gustaf Alstromer, Ed Baker, and Josh Elman

323

#12 - How Should Business Schools Prepare Students for Startups? - Jeff Bussgang and Michael Seibel

324

#11 - At The Intersection of AI, Governments, and Google - Tim Hwang

325

#10 - Office Hours with Ali Rowghani

326

#9 - Sam Altman and Reid Hoffman - From Startup to Scaleup

327

#8 - Rick and Morty Writer - Ryan Ridley

328

#7 - Jessica Livingston on How to Build the Future

329

#6 - Office Hours with Kat Manalac

330

#5 - An AI Primer with Wojciech Zaremba

331

#4 - Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

332

#3 - The Technical Advisor for Silicon Valley on HBO - Ed McManus

333

#2 - Network Effects with Anu Hariharan

334

#1 - Hiring Engineers with Ammon Bartram