Y Combinator Startup Podcast

Y Combinator Startup Podcast

Y Combinator

Episodes 316
Avg. Duration 37m
Activity Highly Active
Apple Rating 4.5 (218)
Since May 2017
Latest Episode Jun 2026

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Publishing Details

Schedule
Weekly
Format
Episodic
Consistency
56%
Hosting
anchor.fm

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About This Podcast

We help founders make something people want. The Y Combinator Podcast is where builders talk about building. From the earliest days of an idea to scaling a company that changes the world, YC partners and founders share real stories, lessons, and tactics from the frontlines.

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Recent Episodes

"The CEO Must Be the Chief AI Officer"

Jun 10, 2026 54m

Brex co-founder and CEO Pedro Franceschi believes most people still underestimate how much AI will change the way companies are built. AI isn't just another tool, it's a new foundation for building…

How to Build an AI-Native Services Company

Jun 03, 2026 11m

Some of the biggest companies of the next decade won't be software businesses, they'll be services companies like insurance carriers, law firms, and tax practices rebuilt from scratch with AI doing…

How To Build Superintelligence Inside Your Company

May 27, 2026 46m

Building superintelligence inside a company isn't about adding AI as a feature. It's about making it the operating system the whole organization runs on. In this episode of the Lightcone, we sat down…

How The Best Companies Defend Against Mediocrity And Rot

May 25, 2026 50m

In this episode of the Main Function Garry sits down with Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup", about his new book, "Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad And How Great Companies Stay Great".…

Paul Graham: Should you move to Silicon Valley?

May 13, 2026 21m

Paul Graham is a co-founder of Y Combinator. He's funded and mentored companies like Dropbox, Airbnb, DoorDash, and thousands of others through YC, and is one of the most influential voices in the…

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

May 08, 2026 41m

We're entering a new era of software where a single person, working with AI agents, can build products that previously required entire teams.In this episode of Lightcone, the hosts break down the…

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

May 01, 2026 37m

A 7-million parameter model outperforming models a thousand times its size on tasks like ARC Prize. That's what recursive reasoning unlocks.In this episode of Decoded, YC's Ankit Gupta and Francois…

How to Build the Future: Demis Hassabis

Apr 29, 2026 40m

Demis Hassabis has had one of the most extraordinary careers in tech. He started as a chess prodigy and video game designer at 17 before getting a PhD in neuroscience and going on to found DeepMind.…

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

Apr 25, 2026 39m

Replit is the leading no-code app builder for consumers and enterprise, letting anyone with an idea build real, deployed software using natural language. The company just raised a $400 million Series…

The Playbook For Building An AI Native Company

Apr 24, 2026 10m

AI isn't just making teams more productive. It's changing how companies should be built.In this episode of Startup School, YC Partner Diana Hu explains what it means to build an AI-native company,…

Stripe Head of Design Katie Dill Breaks Down Their New Website

Apr 22, 2026 43m

Even the most successful websites eventually need a redesign. Take Stripe for example. After six years with the same homepage, they recently unveiled a brand new site that reflects how the fintech…

The GPT Moment for Robotics Is Here

Apr 16, 2026 49m

Physical Intelligence is building a foundation model that can control any robot to do any task — what the team describes as the GPT-1 moment for robotics.The company's cross-embodiment approach…

This Startup Wants To Catch Cancer Before It Spreads

Apr 06, 2026 20m

1 in 11 babies born in America this year will be screened by a genetic test that didn't exist a decade ago.Biotech startup BillionToOne turned a simple but radical idea—detecting rare fragments of…

This Startup Secretly Detects Fraud For Fortune 500s

Mar 31, 2026 31m

In this episode of Founder Firesides, YC Managing Partner Jared Friedman talks to Karine Mellata, co-founder of Variance (W23), who is coming out of stealth and announcing their $21 million Series A.…

How François Chollet Is Building A New Path To AGI

Mar 27, 2026 57m

François Chollet has spent years asking a different question than most of the AI world. Instead of scaling what already works, he’s trying to understand what intelligence actually is—and how to build…

Inside The Startup Reinventing America’s Trillion Dollar Chemical Industry

Mar 20, 2026 13m

Solugen is reinventing the trillion-dollar chemical manufacturing industry by combining biology and chemistry in a new way. In this episode of Hard Tech, YC's Jared Friedman visits co-founders Gaurab…

Building A Global AI Startup From India

Mar 16, 2026 39m

In this episode of The Lightcone, we talk with Mukund and Madhav Jha, the founders of Emergent - an AI platform that lets anyone build and ship production-ready software. In just eight months, users…

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

Mar 09, 2026 53m

YC alum Max Hodak is the co-founder of Neuralink and founder of Science, a company building brain-computer interfaces that can restore sight.Science has developed a tiny retinal implant that…

How To Avoid AI Design Slop

Mar 06, 2026 37m

As no-code design tools become more common, so do the pitfalls. You know what they look like - the purple gradients, annoying hover effects, sections that fade as you scroll. So how do you avoid a…

The Fastest Path To Super Intelligence

Feb 27, 2026 19m

Poetiq is a new startup founded by former DeepMind researchers that recently achieved a major jump on the ARC-AGI and Humanity's Last Exam benchmark by layering a recursive self-improvement system on…

Frequently Asked Questions

How many episodes does Y Combinator Startup Podcast have?

Y Combinator Startup Podcast has published 316 episodes since May 2017, covering topics in Technology.

Is Y Combinator Startup Podcast still active?

Y Combinator Startup Podcast is currently highly active with new episodes weekly. Average episode length is 37m.

How do I contact Y Combinator Startup Podcast for sponsorship or guest appearances?

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