YC is life-changing. There is literally no other way to put it. It accelerates you faster than anything else. It creates a new benchmark for quality, for speed, and for confidence.
YC makes you think bigger, gives you the tools you need to succeed, and creates the perfect environment to go from zero-to-one.
I’ll try to cover as many of the important lessons as I can here. Mostly for my own benefit, but also to share with others in case they find it useful.
For context, I went through YC S25 with Pally, with Tyler Bosmeny as our Group Partner.
Often I get asked what are the top things that YC gives you. I think there are three main ones: community, speed, and the ability to fundraise.
The talent that YC brings together is inspiring.
Interestingly, on day one, I didn’t immediately see it. We all felt pretty young and naive. YC has this insane reputation, and on day one it felt like ok, this is a smart group of people, but it wasn’t clear that this was a group where, on average, 10% would build unicorns.
Over the next few weeks, that all changed.
There wasn’t a ‘single moment’ that this happened, but over the coming weeks I saw my peers turn their naivety into killer instinct and confidence.
Demo Day is a celebration of this. Watching pitch after pitch of teams becoming experts in their niche, going from zero to hundreds of thousands of ARR in a matter of weeks, and describing a grand vision that feels inevitable, it becomes hard to imagine that only 10% of the companies will become unicorns.
I genuinely don’t know how YC finds and judges such incredible talent in just a ten minute interview, but they kill it.
Being around these people inspired me to move faster, to think bigger, and to achieve things I never thought possible. I hope that I’m friends for life with the people I met during YC.