Podcast · 148 episodes
Y Combinator Startup Podcast
by Y Combinator · English
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.
Latest episodes
Robot-Use Agents: Why General-Purpose Models May Win in RoboticsThe episode argues that “robot-use agents” will emerge when general-purpose LLMs (e.g., coding-capable models) control robots via tool/code use, leveraging broad pretraining rather than robotics-only…26 Sep 2026 · 30 min
The State of Startups in 2026YC’s analysis of the “state of startups in 2026,” arguing that hard tech and agentic software are accelerating, with faster revenue ramp and more solo/experienced founders.18 Sep 2026 · 36 min
8 Ways To Improve Your Outbound SalesEight tactics to improve early-stage outbound sales outreach, from manual prospecting to follow-ups and using customer messaging.13 Sep 2026 · 13 min
All episodes
Robot-Use Agents: Why General-Purpose Models May Win in RoboticsThe episode argues that “robot-use agents” will emerge when general-purpose LLMs (e.g., coding-capable models) control robots via tool/code use, leveraging broad pretraining rather than robotics-only…26 Sep 2026 · 30 min · 12 chapters
The State of Startups in 2026YC’s analysis of the “state of startups in 2026,” arguing that hard tech and agentic software are accelerating, with faster revenue ramp and more solo/experienced founders.18 Sep 2026 · 36 min · 18 chapters
8 Ways To Improve Your Outbound SalesEight tactics to improve early-stage outbound sales outreach, from manual prospecting to follow-ups and using customer messaging.13 Sep 2026 · 13 min · 11 chapters
Open Models Change The Economics of AIHow open-weight/“open models” are changing AI economics for enterprises and developers, driven by lower cost, faster model release cycles, and tooling that makes models easy to run (Ollama…12 Sep 2026 · 57 min · 27 chapters
Paul Graham On Startups, Ambition, and Great FoundersPaul Graham (PG) discusses what makes startups succeed, why founders need ambition, how YC has evolved, and what’s changed (and hasn’t) with AI—plus his “frighteningly ambitious” view of progress.5 Sep 2026 · 21 min · 14 chapters
The World’s Largest Electric Aircraft Just FlewHart Aerospace’s first flight of the world’s largest electric aircraft, a hybrid-electric airliner concept designed to cut regional flight costs and emissions by replacing jet engines with electric…4 Sep 2026 · 15 min · 12 chapters
Max Junestrand: You Need The Willingness To Learn Faster Than Anyone ElseMax Junestrand (Legora CEO) explains how Legora built an “agentic operating system for lawyers” using LLMs, survived early skepticism (including a bad first YC interview), and scaled from ~$1M to…29 Aug 2026 · 1 h · 31 chapters
Susan Kare: Designing Icons & Graphics For the Original MacSusan Kare, the “Macintosh artist,” explains how she designed the original Mac’s icons and system fonts under strict hardware limits (16x16 monochrome, 128K).28 Aug 2026 · 52 min · 20 chapters
Chelsea Finn: This is the State of the Art in RoboticsChelsea Finn (Physical Intelligence) explains “state of the art in robotics” and what’s required for general-purpose, long-term autonomous robots—covering high-reliability reinforcement learning with…13 Aug 2026 · 58 min · 23 chapters
Peter Steinberger: "Fun Is Velocity"Peter Steinberger (OpenClaw/Claudbot) explains how his WhatsApp/Discord coding agent relay became OpenClaw, what drove viral growth, and the tradeoffs of security, dependencies, and “fun” in agent…11 Aug 2026 · 42 min · 20 chapters
Max Hodak: How Startups Build SpeedHow deep-tech startups build “speed” via infrastructure—procurement, budgeting/attribution, internal software, and hiring systems—arguing that iteration rate beats raw genius.10 Aug 2026 · 57 min · 22 chapters
How To Design In The Agent EraHow to design in the agent era using Paper, an “agent-native” design tool that renders with HTML/CSS so agents can generate and edit designs directly, reducing token use and hallucinations while…7 Aug 2026 · 56 min · 27 chapters
Garry Tan: Own Your IntelligenceGarry Tan argues for “personal AGI” (agents running on your own infrastructure and memory) rather than rented corporate AI, using Spinoza’s life as a model for building despite excommunication and…6 Aug 2026 · 42 min · 16 chapters
Building the First Data Centers in SpaceStarCloud’s plan to build AI data centers in low Earth orbit to bypass Earth’s energy and power constraints, using solar power and space-based thermal/radiation engineering.5 Aug 2026 · 36 min · 29 chapters
Waymo Co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov: "Move Fast And Ship Safely"Waymo Co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov explains how to build and safely scale “physical AI” for the Waymo Driver, contrasting demos vs real products and outlining seven technical lessons.4 Aug 2026 · 49 min · 18 chapters
Patrick Collison: "What If You Succeed?"Patrick Collison (Stripe cofounder) discusses what it means to “succeed” and what founders should do in an AI era: keep human “cognitive cache” knowledge, write and communicate yourself, don’t fear…3 Aug 2026 · 31 min · 14 chapters
Jeff Dean: The 1% Rule for Building in AIJeff Dean discusses “the 1% rule” for building in AI: small, high-leverage design choices across systems, hardware, and context/tool orchestration.1 Aug 2026 · 57 min · 22 chapters
Alexandr Wang: “This is a Once-in-a-Civilization Opportunity”Alexandr Wang discusses building Scale (data-centric AI), conviction vs consensus, and “personal superintelligence” and agentic ecosystems at Meta; he argues the bottleneck is adoption and world…31 Jul 2026 · 32 min · 15 chapters
Blake Scholl: Breaking the Supersonic BanBlake Scholl (Boom Supersonic) argues the U.S. lost “reasonable speed” since the Concorde era, and claims supersonic passenger flight can return by eliminating sonic boom and changing regulations.29 Jul 2026 · 50 min · 25 chapters
Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup"Sam Altman argues it’s the best time to start a startup, driven by faster cycles, falling costs, and AI/agents enabling ambitious “hard tech” projects; he also discusses AGI-era stakes…28 Jul 2026 · 39 min · 16 chapters
Boris Cherny: Building Claude CodeBoris Cherny (Plot Code) discusses Claude Code/“Claude Code” product building with Opus 5: model capability gains, agentic harness design, safety against prompt injection, and why teams should “press…28 Jul 2026 · 36 min · 13 chapters
Jensen Huang: The Mindset That Built NVIDIAJensen Huang (NVIDIA CEO) recounts NVIDIA’s early misstep in PC 3D graphics, then explains the company’s “accelerate algorithms” philosophy that later aligned with deep learning (AlexNet) and GPUs.27 Jul 2026 · 49 min · 17 chapters
World Models, ExplainedThe episode explains “world models” as a promising solution to AI’s sample-efficiency problem—how to learn new tasks from far fewer training examples.17 Jul 2026 · 1 h 14 min · 24 chapters
How To Better Understand Your UsersThe episode argues that founders should understand individual user behavior instead of relying on aggregate metrics (DAU/MAU).9 Jul 2026 · 14 min · 7 chapters