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Artwork for Y Combinator Startup Podcast

Y Combinator Startup Podcast

Y Combinator
Artificial Intelligence
Y Combinator
Startups
Openai
Software Engineering
Cursor
Entrepreneurship
Artificial General Intelligence
Airbnb
Design
Claude Code
Nothing
Natural Language Processing
AGI
Chatgpt
Cloud Computing
Perplexity
Consumer Marketing
Google
AI Agents

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.

PublishesTwice weeklyEpisodes334Founded9 years ago
Number of ListenersCategory
Technology

Listen to this Podcast

Artwork for Y Combinator Startup Podcast

Latest Episodes

Robots can already fold laundry, make espresso, clean kitchens, and assemble things. The harder problem is getting them to do those tasks reliably, for long periods of time, without a human babysitting them.

At Startup School 2026, Physical Intellig... more

Last November, Peter Steinberger was annoyed that there was no good way to talk to his coding agents from his phone, so he built one himself. A few months later, OpenClaw had exploded into one of the biggest open source AI projects in the world, with... more

Science is building a retinal implant that restores vision to people who have gone blind. One patient has already used it to read a 300-page novel.Building a company like that requires a lot more than getting the technology right. At Startup School 2... more

AI isn't just changing the tools designers use. It's changing how they build, ship, and stand out.

In this episode of Design Review, Stephen Haney, founder of AI-native design tool Paper, joins YC General Partner Aaron Epstein to demo the agent-fir... more

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Recent Guests

Stephen Haney
Founder of Paper, an AI-native design tool
Paper
Episode: How To Design In The Agent Era
Philip Johnston
Co-founder and CEO of Starcloud
Starcloud
Episode: Building the First Data Centers in Space
Dmitri Dolgov
Waymo Co-CEO
Waymo
Episode: Waymo Co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov: "Move Fast And Ship Safely"
Patrick Collison
CEO of Stripe
Stripe
Episode: Patrick Collison: "What If You Succeed?"
Jeff Dean
AI researcher and software engineer known for MapReduce, Bigtable, TensorFlow, TPU, Gemini; co-architect of foundational AI infrastructure at Google
Google
Episode: Jeff Dean: The 1% Rule for Building in AI
Alexandr Wang
Founder, Scale AI (and speaker on entrepreneurial journey)
Scale AI
Episode: Alexandr Wang: “This is a Once-in-a-Civilization Opportunity”
Blake Scholl
Founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic
Boom Supersonic
Episode: Blake Scholl: Breaking the Supersonic Ban
Sam Altman
CEO of OpenAI, longtime tech entrepreneur and investor
OpenAI
Episode: Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup"
Boris Cherny
Creator of Claude Code
Anthropic
Episode: Boris Cherny: Building Claude Code

Reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars from 1.3k ratings
  • It’s ok

    Some episodes are interesting, but the podcast overall just seems like a bunch of ads for their companies

    Apple Podcasts
    3
    Murphycj
    United States7 months ago
  • Everyone is yc

    Thanks yc i always believe the future is bright, everytime hearing or reading about startups

    Apple Podcasts
    5
    Goldenretrieverr
    Indonesiaa year ago
  • Eh

    YC used to be run by actual builders and founders

    Now it’s run by PM’s who got lucky at some tech startup and write substack articles for a living

    Not much to learn from this podcast

    Apple Podcasts
    1
    JJkollins
    United Statesa year ago
  • Huge ground-based knowledge

    Podcast Addict
    5
    OSCAR ORO
    2 years ago
  • Audio

    Guys your audio sucks. Get new equipment

    Apple Podcasts
    3
    Mavrik19
    Canada2 years ago

Listeners Say

Key themes from listener reviews, highlighting what works and what could be improved about the show.

Listeners praise the actionable founder-focused insights and high-caliber guests.
Many appreciate practical frameworks and real-world examples that can be applied to startups.
Some reviews call audio quality inconsistent and episodes feel promotional at times.

Chart Rankings

How this podcast ranks in the Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube charts.

Talking Points

Recent interactions between the hosts and their guests.

How To Design In The Agent Era
Q: What safeguards or guidelines do you use to prevent models from producing low-quality design elements?
We implement guardrails and explicit design guidelines baked into the model prompts, focusing on typography, contrast, and layout decisions that seasoned designers know to apply. This helps avoid generic, vibe-coded outputs and keeps the resulting designs intentional and trustworthy.
How To Design In The Agent Era
Q: How does Paper change the design-to-code workflow for teams?
Paper makes the design-to-code workflow more fluid by treating the codebase as the source of truth, enabling agents to read and modify live code and CSS directly. Designers can push changes via components or direct edits, and developers can pull the resulting code into their IDEs, reducing misinterpretation and speeding up iteration.
How To Design In The Agent Era
Q: What inspired you to build Paper and why did you choose an agent-native approach?
The inspiration came from a love of design and a desire to empower creative professionals with a tool that could move as fast as AI agents, while keeping a strong handoff between design and code. Paper uses HTML/CSS as its rendering backbone to align designers and agents around a common language, making the handoff more reliable and scalable.
World Models, Explained
Q: What are the core components of a world-model based RL setup, and how do they interact during training and test time?
A world-model based RL setup aims to learn a joint distribution of states and actions, with a world model predicting the next state given the current state and action, and a policy that selects actions. Training uses predicted transitions and rewards to update the policy and value function, often via a loss that includes a value error and a policy/likelihood term. At test time, you perform planning (e.g., MCTS) using the learned world model to decide actions in real time, balancing exploration and exploitation.
World Models, Explained
Q: How do you define sample efficiency and why is it important for AI systems to learn from fewer examples?
Sample efficiency is about how rapidly a model improves with each additional training example. Humans tend to gain capability with relatively few samples, while many AI systems require vast data. The discussion frames sample efficiency as tied to having a good world model and inductive biases that allow the system to predict and plan effectively with fewer real-world interactions.

Audience Metrics

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Frequently Asked Questions About Y Combinator Startup Podcast

What is Y Combinator Startup Podcast about and what kind of topics does it cover?

A practical, founder-focused show featuring builders and operators from YC-backed and tech-enabled startups. Episodes span AI-first strategies, startup ideation, governance and long-term company health, and design/product thinking, often with real-world demos or frameworks founders can apply right away. Notable this sample includes deep dives into AI-native organizations, AI governance, and front-line tactics for building scalable startups, making it valuable for founders, investors, and engineers seeking actionable insights and vivid industry case studies.

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How many listeners does Y Combinator Startup Podcast get?

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Which podcasts are similar to Y Combinator Startup Podcast?

These podcasts share a similar audience with Y Combinator Startup Podcast:

1. AI + a16z
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3. The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
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How many episodes of Y Combinator Startup Podcast are there?

Y Combinator Startup Podcast launched 9 years ago and published 334 episodes to date. You can find more information about this podcast including rankings, audience demographics and engagement in our podcast database.

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What guests have appeared on Y Combinator Startup Podcast?

Recent guests on Y Combinator Startup Podcast include:

1. Stephen Haney
2. Philip Johnston
3. Dmitri Dolgov
4. Patrick Collison
5. Jeff Dean
6. Alexandr Wang
7. Blake Scholl
8. Sam Altman

To view more recent guests and their details, simply upgrade your Rephonic account. You'll also get access to a typical guest profile to help you decide if the show is worth pitching.

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