In this episode, the team behind Y Combinator reflects on what has — and hasn’t — changed since the early days of YC, and how AI is reshaping what it means to be a founder. They discuss how they evaluate builders now, why execution still matters more than competition, and what YC is prioritizing as the startup landscape evolves. At its core, the mission remains the same: increase the number of great startups in the world.
Garry Tan is president and CEO of Y Combinator and a group partner. He was a partner at Y Combinator from 2011 to 2015, where he built key parts of the YC experience for founders including Bookface and the Demo Day website. Garry is the co-founder of Initialized Capital and Posterous (YC S08), a blog platform acquired by Twitter, and prior to that, he was an early designer and engineering manager at Palantir.
Harj Taggar is a Managing Partner at YC. Of the 1,000+ companies Harj has advised while at YC, 5 have gone public. He was previously founder and CEO of Triplebyte (YC S15) and Auctomatic (YC W07), which was acquired by Live Current Media in 2008. He first joined YC as a partner in 2010, leaving in 2014 to start Triplebyte and rejoining in 2020.
Jared Friedman is a Managing Partner at YC. Jared has advised more than 20 YC unicorns while at YC. He was co-founder of Scribd, which was funded by Y Combinator in 2006 and grew to be one of the top 100 sites on the web. Jared previously worked at a pioneering AI company.
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Timestamps:
(0:00) Intro
(0:18) The YC product
(5:05) AI and the new builder
(13:01) Pivots and upcoming trends
(22:26) Making something people want
(24:50) What’s in store for SaaS
(33:02) Capital in the age of AI
(36:28) The human capacity for desire
(42:18) Building in America
(44:29) Fixing San Francisco
(47:58) Scaling YC
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Links:
https://x.com/snowmaker
https://x.com/harjtaggar
https://x.com/garrytan
https://x.com/jaltma
https://www.ycombinator.com/
https://uncappedpod.com/
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