Startup School by Y Combinator: Recent Episodes
Startup School by Y Combinator
Learn how to start a startup with YC’s free 10-week course. A series of lectures and conversations with YC Partners, startup founders, and experts on how to start a successful company.
YC President Geoff Ralston concludes Startup School this year with some parting advice, as founders continue on their journey to make something people want.
YC Partners Adora Cheung and Kevin Hale reflect on Startup School 2019 and share some of our learnings from this year's program.
To succeed in building a big company in the long-term, founders must become good at leading, motivating, and retaining great people. Ali Rowghani, YC Partner and CEO of the YC Continuity Fund, takes from his experience working with great leaders to share his three observations on leadership.
YC Partner Jared Friedman covers hard-tech companies and why founders should consider starting one. He also covers a couple of the most common problems hard-tech companies face and how to solve them, with examples from seven YC companies.
YC Partner and GC Carolynn Levy details the basics of startup financing and how modern early stage rounds of financing are done using convertible securities, like the SAFE.
In this lecture, YC Partner Kevin Hale goes over how to package up your idea and communicate it to an investor. He shares his tips on how to craft your pitch in a clear and concise way that effectively grabs your audience's attention.
YC Partner Adora Cheung shares her framework for how founders can efficiently make use of their time. She covers ways to identify and prioritize tasks, in addition to how you can measure their impact on your company.
YC Partner Kevin Hale goes over the fundamentals of pricing and monetization, how it affects your customer acquisition strategy, and how to optimize it through a few rules of thumb.
YC Partner Kevin Hale covers the first principles of conversion, one of the main drivers of growth for your startup, and how you can improve it starting with your landing page.
YC Partner and Head of Admissions Dalton Caldwell talks about pivoting for startups and shares his advice on when and how founders should consider it for their companies.
YC Partner Tim Brady covers the importance of building a strong and coherent culture early and shares six things that you can do now to help you create a solid foundation for your startup.
YC Partner Kevin Hale talks about the importance of building a successful working relationship with your cofounders, and setting up processes to optimize for the strengths of your team.
YC Partner and CFO Kirsty Nathoo shares the most common mistakes startups make with their finances and how they can prevent them.
YC Partner and growth expert Gustaf Alstromer talks about how to measure product market fit, how to decide on a growth channel, metrics that lie about PMF and other mechanics of growth for startups.
YC Partner Kat Manalac presents on how startups should think about launching and why you should do it repeatedly.
YC Partners Anu Hariharan and Adora Cheung answer questions from Startup School founders on how investors measure startups.
YC Continuity Partner Anu Hariharan breaks down the important metrics we look for when we’re evaluating a startup’s business model and common mistakes to avoid when measuring them.
Ilya Volodarsky, co-founder of Segment, presents his tactics for setting up analytics to build your MVP and measure your metrics.
YC Partner Adora Cheung covers the importance of defining and tracking KPIs to understand how effectively your startup is reaching your goals.
YC CEO and Partner Michael Seibel shares his approach to building an MVP and getting your first users as a pre-launch startup.
YC Partner Eric Migicovsky outlines a framework for asking questions and collecting feedback from your users.
YC Partner Kevin Hale walks us through the process of evaluating ideas and how founders should think about their startups.
Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon, joins YC Software Engineer Kyle Corbitt to share his experience and insights on technology and startups.
- Video Link
- Video Transcript
Daniel Gross, former YC Partner and founder shares his wisdom of how to survive and thrive as a startup founder.
- Lecture Slides
- Lecture Transcript
- Video Link
Mathilde Collin, founder of YC alumnus Front, describes what she learned as she scaled Front to 1000s of paying customers.
- Video Link
- Transcript
YC Partner and the creator of Gmail, Paul Buchheit in conversation with Geoff describes how he thinks about companies that manage to scale to the ultimate level.
- Transcript
- Video Link
Serial entrepreneur and angel investor Elad Gil sits down with YC Partner Geoff Ralston to discuss startups.
- Transcript
- Video Link
YC Partner Aaron Harris gives invaluable advice for how to most effectively and strategically meet with investors.
- Lecture Slides
- Lecture Transcript
- Video Link
YC CFO and Partner Kirsty Nathoo gives the lowdown on several different ways to capitalize your company and how those impact founder equity and cap tables overall.
- Lecture Slides
- Lecture Transcript
- Video Link
YC Partner Adora Cheung talks to YC Partner Eric Migicovsky, previously founder and CEO of Pebble, about his experience as a hard tech startup founder.
- Video Link
- Transcript
YC Partner Geoff Ralston gives an introduction to the key concepts to keep in mind once you enter a fundraising process.
- Lecture Slides
- Lecture Transcript
- Video Link
YC Partner Jared Friedman joins founders Lillian Chou (COO, Second Measure), Diana Hu (CTO, Escher Reality), Calvin French-Owen (CTO, Segment) and Ralph Gootee (CTO, PlanGrid), to talk about what can go right and wrong building technology.
- Video Link
YC Partner Adora Cheung talks to Science Exchange Co-Founder and CEO Elizabeth Iorns about her experience as a biotech startup founder.
- Transcript
- Video Link
YC Partner Adora Cheung, along with Patrick Collison, the founder of well known YC alumnus Stripe, discuss how to most effectively run a startup company towards success.
- Transcript
- Video Link
YC Partner Dalton Caldwell gives insight into how YC admissions works and what makes for a successful YC experience.
Clarification on the Application video: Founders can splice together a video if they're not all in the same place; you do not need to be in same place to do the video.
- Lecture Slides
- Lecture Transcript
- Video Link
Former YC Partner and founder of TripleByte Harj Taggar, along with his cofounder Ammon Bartram discuss a topic startups often struggle with most: finding and hiring the key engineers who will build your product.
- Lecture Slides
- Lecture Transcript
- Video Link
Tyler Bosmeny from YC alumnus Clever shares his expertise on how an early stage company should think about sales and about building an enterprise sales team.
- Lecture Slides
- Lecture Transcript
- Video Link
YC Partner Geoff Ralston talks to Cowboy Ventures Founder Aileen Lee.
- Transcript
- Video Link
YC Partner Kat Mañalac and Director of Marketing Craig Cannon describe the most effective ways to use PR and content to help your companies brand and to find more users.
- Lecture Slides
- Lecture Transcript
- Video Link
Former YC partner Garry Tan, the founder of Initialized Capital and a design expert describes how to effectively integrate design into a product development process.
- Lecture Slides
- Lecture Transcript
- Video Link
Former YC partner Garry Tan, the cofounder of Initialized Capital and a design expert describes how to effectively integrate design into a product development process.
- Lecture Slides
- Lecture Transcript
- Video Link
YC Partner Geoff Ralston talks to CoinList Co-Founder and President Andy Bromberg.
- Transcript
- Video Link
Suhail Doshi, founder of YC alumnus Mixpanel and a world-class expert on measurement details how startups should think about discovering the important facts about how their product is used.
- Lecture Slides
- Lecture Transcript
- Video Link
YC Partner Gustaf Alströmer, who was most recently a growth expert at AirBnb describes strategies for scaling your user base.
- Lecture Slides
- Lecture Transcript
- Video Link
Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator, shares his thoughts on how you can succeed as a startup.
- Transcript
- Lecture Slides
- Video Link
YC Partner Adora Cheung talks to Gobble founder and CEO Ooshma Garg.
- Transcript
- Video Link
David Rusenko from YC alumus Weebly details the story of how Weebly developed one of the most popular website creation and hosting sites on the web today.
- Transcript
- Lecture Slides
- Video Link
YC CEO Michael Seibel outlines how successful startups think about building something people want.
- What problem are you solving?
- Who is your Customer?
- How to set up metrics
- Product Development
- Pivot vs. Iterate?
Transcript
Lecture Slides
Video Link
YC Partner Geoff Ralston talks with Paul Graham, one of the founders of YC, and tries to draw out as much startup wisdom as possible in 1/2 hour of conversation.
- Transcript
- Video Link
YC Partners Carolynn Levy, Jon Levy, and YC General Counsel Jason Kwon recap on legal mechanics for startups, in addition to common mistakes and problems.
- Transcript
- Lecture Slides
- Video Link
YC Partners Adora Cheung and Geoff Ralston introduce Startup School 2018.
- Geoff's Slides
- Adora's Slides
- Transcript
- Video Link