Simon Willison’s Weblog

What is it like going through the Y Combinator program?

6th February 2011

My answer to What is it like going through the Y Combinator program? on Quora

This essay is pretty comprehensive—it’s what convinced us to apply to YC, and our experience so far has been true to what it describes: http://ycombinator.com/atyc.html

Posted 6th February 2011 at 3:22 pm · Follow me on Mastodon, Bluesky, Twitter or subscribe to my newsletter

More recent articles

DeepSeek V4 - almost on the frontier, a fraction of the price - 24th April 2026
Extract PDF text in your browser with LiteParse for the web - 23rd April 2026
A pelican for GPT-5.5 via the semi-official Codex backdoor API - 23rd April 2026

This is What is it like going through the Y Combinator program? by Simon Willison, posted on 6th February 2011.

startups 190 y-combinator 52 quora 1005

Next: What are some good user interface/user experience workshops/conferences coming up this March(p.s. distance isn't a factor, I'm willingly to travel)?

Previous: Where can I find a good list of conferences that take will place Boston in early April 2011?

Monthly briefing

Sponsor me for $10/month and get a curated email digest of the month's most important LLM developments.

Pay me to send you less!

Sponsor & subscribe