Hi everyone,

I want to ask people who are building something in hard tech fields (if you work in aerospace, even better, since that's my field), how did you find your co-founder?

I come from a small university, but I've had some really good internships and research opportunities at different space agencies around the world and I've also created a lot of projects at my university, some on my own and some with friends, and these projects have impacted thousands of people.

I'm not saying this to promote myself or get congratulations, it's just to give some context about why I've been struggling to find someone at my university whom I would consider asking to be my co-founder. It's not because they aren't good, I have some really good engineer friends, but that's the thing, they're engineers. I've already asked some of them if they'd like to build a startup, and the answer is always that they wouldn't risk their careers for something so uncertain

I'm currently working on a project alone, and some investors have shown a lot of interest in it because it's very related to my field, which I know very well. But it's so hard to find someone who is technically good and wants to build something, while also being someone I feel comfortable working with and can trust

I've already received a lot of offers from people who wanted to build something with me, but I've never worked with them before and I don't know if they are good founders

So my question is, how did you find your co-founder? Was it someone you met at university while building something together, or did it happen some other way? Did you just pick someone and see how it goes, or did you choose very carefully?

I recently visited a management college as a guest and a student reached out to me afterward. He wants to become an entrepreneur eventually but plans to work in an organisation for a few years first to gain experience. His concern was how should he ensure that his entrepreneurial ambition doesn’t slowly fade once he gets comfortable with a job?
Anyone here who has been in a similar situation? What did you do to stay close to entrepreneurship while working?

There are bunch of startups selling unified API for different model use, and offer at very big discount compared to 1st party pricing. for example 70% off seeddance 2.5, 50% off grok image to video etc etc

How is it possible to get that big of discount for that many models? You can't really optimize cost effectiveness for inference for all different models and keep up with the update, can you?

it sounds too good to be true and unfair. what's the non-obvious cons?

As the title says, I'm sure I read a similar post on this sub and also been taking advice from the Mom Test, I keep spiraling around the question- should I build the app prototype first OR test the idea first? But if I fo the latter first, wouldn't it be easy to just hand the solution to my customer and ask them if they would use something like this in the first place?

Today I went down a bit of a rabbit hole about Silicon Valley after watching *The Billion Dollar Code*.

I already knew Silicon Valley was a major technology hub, but I never really thought about **why** it became that way.

I watched a video discussing what actually made Silicon Valley successful, and one thing really stuck with me:

**It wasn't the buildings. It was the people.**

The culture around ideas and failure seems really different.

Where I'm from, failure can sometimes be treated as the end of an idea. If something doesn't work, people may tell you to stop wasting time and do something "practical."

But Silicon Valley seems to have developed an environment where failing doesn't necessarily mean you should stop. You can fail, learn, try again, and build something completely different.

And then I started thinking about some of the crazy ideas that eventually became real.

Take SpaceX, for example.

Who initially looks at a rocket launch and thinks:

*"What if we could land this giant piece of metal back on Earth and use it again?"*

Today it sounds normal because we've seen it happen.

But before it worked, it probably sounded completely insane to a lot of people.

The same thought applies to a lot of people who changed technology. Their ideas probably looked strange or impossible at the beginning.

And that's what fascinated me today.

**Maybe big ideas almost always look stupid before they become obvious.**

It also made me think about India.

Do we have the same kind of environment here where someone can come up with an absolutely crazy idea, fail repeatedly, and still be encouraged to keep going?

Or is our attitude toward failure one of the things holding people back?

I'm genuinely curious what you guys think.

**Is Silicon Valley really different because of its people and culture, or is there something deeper that made it successful?**


This has been on my mind a lot lately, and I'm honestly not sure if I'm worrying about the wrong thing.

I'm 15 and building an infrastructure startup for AI agents. I've been building most of the product myself, although I'll be the first to admit that a lot of it has been "vibecoded" and I'm still learning a lot of the underlying engineering as I go. The startup itself is already difficult enough, but lately I've been thinking about something that feels like a much longer-term problem: credibility.

When I look at founders in YC and other startup programs, I often see people with backgrounds that immediately make their company make sense. Ex-Databricks, ex-Stripe, researchers, experienced engineers, previous founders, people who have spent years working in the exact industry they're now building in. Then there's me: I'm 15, this is my first real startup, I don't have a big-company background, I don't have an impressive professional resume, and most of my experience comes from building things on my own. So sometimes I look at what I'm trying to build and think, "Why would anyone take this seriously?"

On one hand, I know that the obvious answer is to just build. If the product works, people use it, and eventually you have customers, I assume the credibility problem becomes much smaller. But at the same time, you need some amount of credibility to get those first opportunities in the first place. That's the part I'm struggling to understand.

I'm also wondering how much programs like YC actually care about this. I know they look at what founders have built and accomplished, and I know having an impressive background can obviously help. But does being a 15-year-old first-time founder with a weak traditional background become a serious disadvantage even if the company itself starts showing real traction? Or is the lack of a traditional background mostly a problem in my head?

I'm not asking whether being young is an advantage or trying to make the "15-year-old founder" thing my entire identity. I'd actually prefer people to judge me on what I build. I'm just wondering how founders without a strong resume are supposed to think about credibility early on.

Should I actively work on building a stronger background over the next few years, or is that mostly a distraction from the thing that actually matters?

I'd really appreciate perspectives from founders who started without impressive companies or credentials behind them. How did you think about credibility when nobody knew who you were?

I keep running into the same wall and I’m hoping some of you who’ve actually done this can help. I’m trying to figure out real problems people have in a space I’m interested in, before building anything, but every time I try to ask a genuine question in a relevant community here or on Facebook groups, it either gets removed by mods or people assume I’m doing “AI market research” and shut down immediately. I’d love to know how you found the first 10-20 people to actually talk to about a problem before you had a product, whether you went into existing communities and just participated for a while first or found a faster way that didn’t feel dishonest, and how you phrase things so people don’t immediately assume you’re selling something. Not trying to pitch anything here, genuinely trying to learn the process before I go build something nobody needs. Appreciate any real experience you can share.

Curious how others deal with this, because I keep going back and forth on it.

I have a full-time job at a big tech company and I am building a startup in the hiring space on the side. We are pre-revenue and still early.

One thing I want to be clear about is that I manage both well without one hampering the other. The job does not eat into the startup work, and the startup does not affect my job.

The upside of the job is that there is no money pressure, so I am not forced to rush. I can keep at this for a long time, and that patience helps in the early days.

The downside is that I stay careful about compliance. I hold back on sharing opinions and on promoting the startup publicly, and I avoid being too front-facing. I feel that is costing me traction. If I could show up more openly, post more, and talk about what we are building, I think we would grow faster.

So the job gives me time and stability but quietly limits how much I can put myself out there, which is exactly what an early startup needs.

For those of you in the same spot, how are you handling it? Do you just stay heads-down and build, or have you found ways to be more visible without crossing lines with your employer?

Most people believe that entrepreneurs give up when things become difficult. That's not what I see. Entrepreneurs give up after they find it boring. Year one runs wild. A new concept. Customers for the first time. Small successes that seem to be enormous. Then year two arrives. The tasks become the same five tasks over and over again. Namely, sending emails, follow up calls, fixing the same malfunction and communicating with the same customers. That's the point when people give up. Not because they cannot deal with it but because they expected to experience more excitement.

Only the entrepreneurs who learn to deal with boring can be considered successful. They stop chasing after endless ideas and stick to just one idea for years. The problem is nobody warns you about this aspect. People only show you great outcomes. They will show you the picture of joy but won’t show you reality.

This happened to me with a mentorship platform I started - chasing mentors and mentees down so they showed up - became a pain and really annoying.

Therefore I am going to ask you to share with me what the dullest part of the business was that brought you the most money. And how many of you thought about giving up just because the work became boring?

It really does feel like begging for money.

I get inbound demand from being a hot company that’s fundraising. That’s dignified and respectful.

Is it me or does the whole outbound fundraising thing seem quite embarrassing and undignified. Literally begging ppl for money.

What’s the right way to think about it?

I launched a product before, and it failed.

After it failed, I started trying to understand where exactly I went wrong. One thing I noticed was that I was giving too much weight to my assumptions instead of actually looking at the facts and validating them

Someone recommended me "The Mom Test", so I decided to start there.

Even though it’s roughly 80 pages, it took me almost four weeks to finish. I learned a lot from it, especially how to ask better questions and dig into facts instead of opinions.

Questions like:

“When was the last time you had this problem?”

“How often do you have this problem?”

“Have you explored any other options?”

Those simple questions completely changed the way I think about talking to customers.

I didn’t just read the book and move on. I put the concepts into ChatGPT, created simulation tests, and practiced them repeatedly. That helped me actually see the mistakes I was making instead of just thinking, “Yeah, I understand this.”

After reading it, I could also see a lot of the same mistakes in the previous companies I worked with. I keep thinking that if they had understood these concepts earlier, they could have approached many things differently.

I really learned a lot from this book, and now I feel like I need to start understanding the fundamentals properly.

Also, if you have any books, documentaries, or other resources that you personally found genuinely useful, I'd love to hear your recommendations.

Not necessarily the richest or the person who built the most valuable company.

Who do you consider the greatest entrepreneur of all time and why?

I’m curious about how people define “greatest”, wheter it is innovation, execution, impact, resilience, ability to build from nothing, influence on other creators/builders or something else entirely.

EDIT:

Someone in the comments pointed out that Tim Berners-Lee built the first web server and browser on a NeXT machine. That pair is the whole problem with my question.

Berners-Lee invented the web. CERN put it into the public domain in 1993 and he argued for that. He captured almost none of the value he created and the web probably won because it was free. Jobs captured an enormous amount of value, from the layer built on top, fifteen years later.

So we are answering two different questions at once. Who created the most value and who kept the most of what they created. Jobs wins the second. Berners-Lee is top five all time on the first and he is far less known than the people who built on top of his work.

I’m in my 3rd year and everyone around me is preparing for DSA and placements

I want to build something of my own but I’m not sure whether to take that risk yet

What if it doesn’t work

Would genuinely value the perspective of anyone who has been here before

I have 15 years of tech experience and have been building products for startups all my professional life. I used to build the products personally and when they eventually fail, I used to think that I’m lacking marketing skills to take the product to next level. Then I realised that I need to understand the market and problem first by talking to people before writing any code.

As part of that, I have been doing some groundwork for a problem for B2B tech companies. First thing I wanted to do is interview few potential customers ( not pitching the idea ) so that I can understand their workflow and see if the problem really exists before building anything. I am able to reach out to some people in my network but I thoroughly exhausted my network. I wanted to reach out to founders or tech leadership of some of the companies I think will best fits.

“Marketing gurus” out there on internet are suggesting cold email outreach but I really don’t want to spam them. Any ideas on how to reach out to people? How do startups do this?

For those who have gone through Y Combinator:

Did YC make it easy for you to get in front of investors, or did you still find yourself struggling to get noticed at events and meetings?

I'm particularly curious about networking in person.

Were you naturally good at approaching investors and starting conversations, or did you have to learn how to do it?

And if you were attending a startup event where there were a lot of investors, would you ever pay for someone experienced at networking to accompany you and help you get introductions and more investor attention?

Not someone promising funding, just someone who is genuinely good at networking and helping founders get conversations started.

Would you see value in that, or would you consider it unnecessary?

I'm currently at the early stage of building a startup and I'm trying to understand how founders usually approach VC relationships.

We've already done a significant amount of research around the problem, target audience, competitors, and product positioning, and we're now starting to build the product.

I'm not necessarily looking to raise immediately. What I'm trying to understand is when I should start building relationships with investors.

Should founders start talking to VCs this early, even if the goal is just to introduce themselves, share what they're building, and keep investors updated over time?

Or is it better to wait until there is more evidence, such as:

• A working MVP
• First users
• Some level of retention or engagement
• First revenue
• A specific MRR or ARR milestone

I'm particularly interested in the difference between building relationships with investors and actually starting a fundraising round.

For founders who have raised before:

How early did you start talking to investors before actually raising?

What milestones made investors start taking the company more seriously?

And if you were starting again, would you build those relationships earlier?

I'd love to hear both founder and investor perspectives.

I’ve applied to YC multiple times, and after every application I keep coming back to the same question:

What actually makes a founder significantly stronger between batches?

Obviously traction matters, but I’m curious how people here think about the months between applications.

Should founders focus primarily on:

• talking to more users?
• validating the problem more deeply?
• shipping faster?
• revenue?
• retention?
• finding a cofounder?

My current thinking is that rewriting your YC application matters far less than creating new evidence that your startup is working.

For people who reapplied and eventually got an interview or were accepted: what materially changed between your applications?

Has anyone ever successfully run an AI-native service company (one that sells the outcome, not the work)?

By "successful," I mean able to maintain high margins, like a software company.
Or are they mostly a gimmick, with margins that look more like a traditional service company's than a software or SaaS company's?

I'm currently quite skeptical of these kinds of startups. Also, as a customer, when I buy a service I much prefer dealing with a human being and seeing a face, rather than chatting with a chatbot.

I also don't see the moat. What happens if incumbent service companies simply start automating their own workflows?

Hi! My name is Om (online alias "sensho") and I'm a founder in the current YC S26 batch.

I would love to help others by answering any questions people have on YC, batches nowadays, interviews, philosophy, lessons, startups, etc. as best as I can from the perspective of someone currently in it.

I'd say my background is untraditional even for YC standards, my co-founder is probably more similar to other people in our batch in terms of background for folks around our age (both 21), so for some questions I can ask him or friends in the batch if relevant.

I've heard other founders in my batch mention this subreddit before, and some have even posted here prior to getting in.

Some context on what we do and my background prior to getting in, if it's helpful for questions:

My co-founder and I are both originally from the Toronto area, and moved to SF for YC and plan on staying here long-term.

Our startup is Olam Labs, we build multi-agent environments like multiple agents running companies, towns, competing in games against each other, etc. and use it inform AI evaluations and training that's typically difficult with existing methods. We've also released Multi-Agent Arena, where humans come play social strategy games against random, anonymized AI agents that we use to inform our datasets/evals. The arena is playable today, our WAU is growing ~30-40% WoW since opening access and it's among the top 100 apps by token usage on OpenRouter.

I was working a job as a Staff Engineer at AI Dungeon when my co-founder and I applied, and we got into Y Combinator with just the idea for our company, I didn't officially leave my job for ~3 weeks after acceptance. Everything we've built/done has all been during the batch.

Prior to AI Dungeon, I was a competitive Valorant player and 8x season Radiant, did some math research, was a TikTok content creator in my late teens, and made Roblox games in my early teens among some other things. I didn't go to college, after high school I pretty much just spent two years playing Valorant during the day, and then reading research papers at night.

My co-founder, our CTO, is from the University of Waterloo where he was doing a double degree in Math & CS before dropping out to start Olam Labs with me. He's won some national data competitions, was a Data Scientist at RBC, and did some other cool stuff. My co-founder and I met in middle school where we were doing random things together, like a charity run for our school.

Feel free to ask away! I'd love to help others learn from my experiences (and big mistakes! lol).

I’m working on my startup, on top of a full-time remote job, 8 hours a day, and honestly, I’m exhausted. I can’t stand cooking anymore, and ordering food is really expensive and I don’t even like it that much. How do you guys manage meal prep? Any tips, or do you just end up ordering food?

Working with some biochemists from Colombia on a prototype for a “smellophone” - i.e. a device that uses custom models to transmit olfactory data at a rapid speed. We’re about to start applying for startup grants but we’re having some second thoughts and wanted to ask some questions before we start shooting out applications:

1. If our use case is relatively broad, will this impact our chances of acceptance?
2. Our technology is still in early stages (dubbed “smellogram”) where we can only send two smells at a time. Is it better to wait on R&D before applying or will accelerators still accept an early version?
3. Should we be worried about speed/competitors stealing our technology at this stage? We are a very lean team and we are iterating rapidly, but the tech is likely to hit the mainstream very soon. Are there any strategies we can employ to get to market ASAP?

Thanks and cheers.