Ideas
Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas
How to get Startup Ideas
Ideas for Startups
How to Invent the Future I (SUS 2017)
How to Invent the Future II (SUS 2017)
Anne Wojcicki on How to Build the Future
Drew Houston on How to Build the Future
Sam Altman on How to Build the Future
Elon Musk on How to Build the Future
Mark Zuckerberg on How to Build the Future
How to Get Ideas (SUS 2017)
Request for Startups
The Idea (Startup Playbook)
Why Toys?
Ideas, Products, Teams and Execution Part II (SUS 2014)
Ideas, Products, Teams and Execution Part I (SUS 2014)
Toy Markets
How to Get and Test Ideas
Getting Started
How and Why to Start A Startup (SUS 2017)
Before the Startup
Do Things That Don’t Scale
A Student’s Guide to Startups
One Order of Operations for Starting a Startup
Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee
Why Should I Start a Startup?
A Letter to College Students
Grow The Puzzle Around You
YC’s Essential Startup Advice
How to Succeed with a Startup (SUS 2018)
Doing Things That Don’t Scale (SUS 2014)
A Conversation with Paul Graham (SUS 2018)
Diane Greene’s Advice for Founders
What Makes Founders Succeed
Founders at Work (Book)
The Path to $100B (SUS 2018)
A Conversation with Elad Gil (SUS 2018)
What to Do with Too Much Advice
I’m a Cofounder of Gusto, Here’s the Advice I Give Every Startup Founder
Advice for First Time Founders
How to Create Luck
Co-founders
Finding a Co-founder in College
Turning a Best Friend into a Co-founder
How to Split Equity Among Co-Founders
Technical Co-founder
How Much Equity to Give Your Cofounders?
How to Find a Cofounder
Growth
Startup = Growth
How to Get Users and Grow (SUS 2017)
Network Effects
Growth Guide: How to Set Up, Staff and Scale a Growth Program
Growth (Startup Playbook)
On Growing: 7 Lessons from WeChat
Growth (SUS 2014)
Laying The Foundation for Sustainable Growth
How to Get Users and Grow (SUS 2018)
How to Monetize a Freemium Business
SEO Advice from SurveyMonkey Director of SEO and Growth
9 Ways to Build Virality into your Product
After PMF: People, Customers, Sales (SUS 2018)
SEO Advice from SurveyMonkey Director of SEO and Growth
Advice from the High Growth Handbook, a Guide to Scaling Startups
Scaling Growth
How SketchDeck Went Back to Basics on Growth
Sales & Marketing
Big Deals
Content Marketing Tips from Experts
Sales and Marketing (SUS 2014)
Why Startups Need to Focus on Sales, Not Marketing
How to Sell (SUS 2018)
Sales Advice for Technical Founders
The Delicate Balance of B2B Sales
The Counter-Intuitive Pricing of Enterprise Sales
YC Sales Agreement Template
Most Startups Are Undercharging
PR
How to Think About PR (SUS 2017)
Getting Press for Your Startup
PR and Content for Growth (SUS 2018)
Leadership
Jobs of the CEO (Startup Playbook)
What’s the Second Job of a Startup CEO?
How Do You Measure Leadership
How to be a Great Founder (SUS 2014)
Running Your Startup (SUS 2018)
A Conversation with Werner Vogels (SUS 2018)
People & Culture
How to Create an Employee Handbook
A Guide to Employee Equity
Hiring and Culture (SUS 2014)
Culture (SUS 2014)
How to Hire
A Great Team (Startup Playbook)
Hiring and Managing (Startup Playbook)
Building an Inclusive Company Culture
Making Culture a Tangile Metric
Diversity & Inclusion at Early Stage Startups
Scaling Culture
How to Hire Your First Engineer
Convincing Engineers to Join Your Team
GitLab’s Secret to Managing 160 Employees in 160 Locations
Creating Good Company Culture (and Sticking to It)
Building an Engineering Team (SUS 2018)
A Conversation with Aileen Lee (SUS 2018)
Hiring Tips from Pebble Watch Founder Eric Migicovsky
Startup Hiring Advice
Product
How to Measure (SUS 2017)
How to Build a Product I (SUS 2017)
How to Build a Product II (SUS 2017)
How to Build a Product III (SUS 2017)
How to Build a Product IV (SUS 2017)
How to Find Product Market Fit (SUS 2017)
A Great Product (Startup Playbook)
The Customization Curve
Scaling Product at Airbnb
Before You Grow
Product Development Cycle Fundamentals
A Minimum Viable Product Is Not a Product, It’s a Process
The Real Product Market Fit
Practical Design: MVP Spec
Practical Design: Design Brief
Practical Design: Pitching
Practical Design: Messaging
Practical Design: User Observation
The Art of Shipping Early and Often
Be Wary of Solving a Small, Rare Problem
How to Run a User Interview (SUS 2014)
How to Build Products Users Love (SUS 2014)
Building Product, Talking to Users and Growing (SUS 2014)
Startup Priorities
If your product is Great, it doesn’t need to be Good
Finding Product Market Fit
How to Find Product-Market Fit (SUS 2018)
Building Product (SUS 2018)
How to Measure Your Product (SUS 2018)
Finding Product-Market Fit in the Education Industry
Startup Technology – Technical Founder Advice (SUS 2018)
Design for Startups, Part 1 (SUS 2018)
Design for Startups, Part 2 (SUS 2018)
Building a Startup is Not About Building a Product, It’s About Solving a Problem
The More You Communicate with Users, the Higher Chance You’ll Build Something They Want
Product and Design Process for Remote Teams
Should I Use a Dev Shop?
Fundraising
How to Convince Investors
How to Raise Money
How to Talk to Investors
The Venture Capital Squeeze
A Fundraising Survival Guide
The Equity Equation
How to Present to Investors
The Hacker’s Guide to Investors
How to Fund a Startup
When to raise a Series A
Process and Leverage in Fundraising
How to Raise Money (SUS 2017)
Fundraising Advice from Female Founders
A Guide to Seed Fundraising
Raising Money Online Advice for Startups
Dilution
How to Design a Better Pitch Deck
Advice on Pitching
How to Pitch Your Company
A Guide to Demo Day Pitches
How to Email Early Stage Investors
Why Does Your Company Deserve More Money?
Founders of Science Exchange, Goldbely, and The Flex Company Discuss Fundraising
Fundraising (Startup Playbook)
How to Raise Money (SUS 2014)
How to Get Meetings with Investors and Raise Money (SUS 2018)
Fundraising Fundamentals (SUS 2018)
Scaling and Fundraising
Don’t Over Optimize Fundraising
A Guide to Preemptive Funding Offers
Tips on Formation and Fundraising
How Investors Think About Ideas
How Pitching Investors is Different Than Pitching Customers
Fundraising Docs
YC’s Series A Diligence Checklist
YC Seed Deck
Angelcalc Conversion Tool
Example Proforma with Safes Converting Pre-round
Safes are not bad for entrepreneurs
SAFE Financing Documents
Understanding SAFEs and Priced Equity Rounds (SUS 2018)
Legal & Finance
Startup Mechanics (SUS 2017)
Legal and Accounting Basics for Startups (SUS 2014)
Startup Legal Mechanics (SUS 2018)
The Founder’s Guide to Selling Your Startup Company
Startup Advisor Equity?
Competition
Enterprise
Staying Alive
The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups
How Not to Fail
Be Relentlessly Resourceful
The Hardest Lessons for Starups to Learn
How Not to Die
Default Alive or Default Dead
Why VCs sometimes push companies to burn too fast
Advice for Companies With Less Than 1 Year of Runway
A Conversation with Ooshma Garg (SUS 2018)
How to Win (SUS 2018)
On Shutting Down
Later Stage
Later Stage Advice for Startups
How to Succeed Long-term (SUS 2017)
The Two Most Common Mistakes Growth Stage Founders Make
Later-stage Advice (SUS 2014)
Subtle Mid-Stage Startup Pitfalls
Office Hours
Investing
The Why and How of Angel Investing (IS 2018)
Investing Fundamentals (IS 2018)
Founder Meetings (IS 2018)
Everything I Know About Picking Startups (IS 2018)
Overtime (IS 2018) I
Angelic Advice Part I (IS 2018)
Angelic Advice Part II (IS 2018)
Overtime (IS 2018) II
Early Stage Investing: Past Present and Future (IS 2018)
How To Be A Good Investor (IS 2018)
Overtime (IS 2018) III
The Ronco Principle
Transparency in Startup Investing
What Founder Friendly Actually Means
Applying to YC
Frequently Asked Questions From YC Applicants
Common Misconceptions About Applying to YC
Applying to YC
How to Apply to YC
YC Application Advice from African Startups
Early Decision for College and Grad Students
The Application Video
How to Apply and Succeed at Y Combinator (SUS 2018)
Does YC Fund Solo Founders?
When is the Right Time to Apply to Y Combinator?
Non-profits
Five Ways Non-profits Can Think Like Startups
What Y Combinator Looks for in Nonprofits
Founder Stories: Detroit Water Project’s Tiffani Ashley Bell
Founder Stories: Grace Garey, Founder of Watsi (YC W13)
Hardware
Hardware, Less Hard
Hardware Founders: (When) Should You Try To Raise VC Money?
How to Design Hardware Products (SUS 2014)
What working on Pebble taught me about building hardware
Biotech
How Scientists Can Thrive in the Startup World
Biotech Companies in YC
Athelas: Our Road From Hack To Product
Founder Stories: Ambika Bumb, Founder of Bikanta (YC S14)
Founder Stories: Jessica Richman, Founder of uBiome (YC S14)
Advice for Biotech Founders (SUS 2018)
Hard tech
Quantum Computing
Founder Stories: Blake Scholl of Boom Technology
A Conversation on Hard Tech (SUS 2018)