1:28 - Tomer describes Gusto Embedded and the complexities behind compliance.</p><ul><li>Gusto Embedded takes ten years of Gusto’s experience building payroll software and compliance and makes it available to any software company wanting to ship their own payroll product to the market. </li></ul><p><strong>5:00 </strong>- Why did you decide to pursue startups as the company’s first target audience? How did you think about customer segments in that first year? </p><p><em>Over the last ten years, Gusto has scaled to build for multiple customer segments – starting with startups, then SMBs, accountants, and now with Gusto Embedded Payroll, developers who are embedding payroll directly into their software. </em></p><ul><li>When you have a grand vision, where do you start as a founder? Choose a customer segment. Make sure you choose a segment where 1) they have an important customer problem, 2) the product you are building solves that problem, and 3) you can reach your customer. </li></ul><p><strong>9:30 </strong>- Who were your competitors in the early days? </p><ul><li>The old, traditional payroll solutions, which were complex. With Gusto, <em>anyone</em> can run payroll at <em>any time</em>. Gusto also focuses on employees, a critical part of the system, by building a great payroll experience for them. </li></ul><p><strong>11:30 </strong>- Why did you decide to build for SMBs after startups? </p><ul><li>Look at your current customer base and learn from customers adjacent to the market you want to expand into. When you do expand into another vertical, make sure you maintain that early customer love. </li></ul><p><strong>14:45</strong> - How did you maintain the customer love of the existing customer segment? </p><ul><li>Think about your long-term vision and don’t put yourself in a corner when you want to move to the next segment. </li></ul><p><strong>17:00</strong> - Most startups find it hard to tackle the SMB market. Why do you think this is the case? </p><ul><li>Traditionally SMBs are hard to reach and use incomplete or manual solutions. Since 2000 an entire generation of business owners had to learn to trust online financial services. Today, SMBs are online and looking for solutions.</li></ul><p><strong>22:25 </strong>- What is different about serving SMBs as a customer versus startups? </p><ul><li>Startups come and go, and the real economics come from the big winners. Focusing on startups is a good place to start your journey, but think about how to scale with them.</li><li>There are more small businesses than startups, and they are around for a long time – but most don’t grow to thousands of employees. You need to build a business model that works with that dynamic. </li></ul><p><strong>27:00 - </strong>Why did you pursue developers and how did you decide to service them? </p><ul><li>For many verticals, it is much better to have an all-in-one platform to run your small businesses. But payroll is really hard to build yourself. Gusto Embedded helps partners deliver a more integrated solution for customers without investing the several years and tens of millions of dollars.</li></ul><p><strong>29:00 </strong>- Gusto went from directly acquiring small businesses as customers to creating an embedded solution – essentially “giving up” the relationship with the customer. How did you think about that? </p><ul><li>Evaluate the future of the industry and don’t ignore reality. Be the one to create that future. In this case, many payroll customers want all-in-one solutions. We can either try to meet those needs directly, or empower hundreds of partners to customize unique solutions.</li></ul><p><strong>33:00 - </strong>How should founders think about who to partner with? When should founders build directly for the industry and when should they go the embedded route? </p><ul><li>Think about the unique insight you have in the business you’re creating and make sure you own your destiny around that insight.</li><li>For your customer, what does a successful product look like, and could you partner with a company to fulfill those needs.</li><li>Your product must be high-quality. You have to put enough resources behind whatever you own. For everything else, you must ensure you bring in the right partner. It’s all about the end-to-end experience. </li></ul><p><strong>39:30</strong> - Gusto now makes it easier for software providers to bake compliance into embedded payroll. Tomer, I think developers looking at a payroll API would assume that compliance is baked in. But there are often steps companies have to take beyond just calling APIs. Tell us if that assumption holds.</p><ul><li>Regulation can change every quarter and every year. This is built into the product. We protect the customer and make it easy for developers to ship something quickly that is compliant for the long term.</li><li>One third of the companies in the U.S. get fined for mistakes on payroll. </li></ul><p><strong>43:00 - </strong>Compliance is the hardest part of payroll to build and ultimately has to be right. It took ten years of experience in compliance to launch this into Gusto Embedded Payroll. What advice do you have for founders who are building complicated, yet essential, components for an industry?</p><ul><li>Determine the parts of your product that are highly regulated and which areas are not. Build a culture that ensures quality-first in those highly-regulated areas, as well as a culture where people can iterate quickly in other areas. You can’t build a monolithic culture.</li><li>Embrace cross functional work. </li></ul><p><strong>46:00 </strong>- In the early days of Gusto, what guidance did you provide to your engineers about building payroll? What areas could break and which areas could not break? </p><p><strong>48:40</strong> - Looking back, would you have done anything different? </p><ul><li>Start charging what you feel is the value you provide; fix downwards versus upwards. If you’re truly adding value, customers won’t hesitate moving forward at that price.</li><li>Have the humility to learn from the customer and how the market changes around you. </li></ul><p><strong>51:45 </strong>- How should founders be thinking about embedded finance and how does this market evolve over the next 5-10 years? </p><ul><li>When you build a new software system for your customer, the more connected the system is for your customer, the better it is. Embedded products enable you to do that quickly and in high quality.</li><li>Bring more solutions into your product that are driven by what your customer needs. Understand your customer’s day-to-day, and figure out how to build something that solves their entire flow instead of one segment.</li><li>If you are not making money on your product, you don’t know if there's a product market fit. If you can charge and retain a customer, then there is product market fit. </li></ul><p><strong>56:30</strong> - Outside of payroll, what are you seeing product wise offered by APIs? </p><ul><li>This space is brand new and there’s a ton of opportunity to create a product that helps customers go through the end-to-end journey successfully and solves multiple pain points – instead of the customer needing ten years of background to create a high-quality solution.</li></ul>","comment_id":"62fa7b87ab52db0001d3b656","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/08/BlogTwitter-Image-Template--5-.jpg","featured":true,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2022-08-15T09:59:51.000-07:00","updated_at":"2022-08-15T11:48:12.000-07:00","published_at":"2022-08-15T11:32:19.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":"Today, more than 200,000 businesses use Gusto for payroll, employee benefits, talent management, and more. And with the recent addition of Gusto Embedded, developers now use Gusto’s APIs and pre-build UI flows to embed payroll, tax filing, and payments infrastructure into products. ","codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a7106f","name":"Y Combinator","slug":"yc","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/yc.png","cover_image":null,"bio":null,"website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/yc/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71179","name":"YC Events","slug":"yc-events","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-events/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71170","name":"Startups","slug":"startups","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/startups/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71175","name":"Interview","slug":"interview","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/interview/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71181","name":"YC Continuity","slug":"yc-continuity","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-continuity/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71152","name":"Founder Stories","slug":"founder-stories","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/founder-stories/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71176","name":"Podcast","slug":"podcast","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/podcast/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a711b7","name":"#24","slug":"hash-24","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"internal","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/404/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71155","name":"Growth","slug":"growth","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/growth/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71158","name":"Leadership","slug":"leadership","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/leadership/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a7106f","name":"Y Combinator","slug":"yc","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/yc.png","cover_image":null,"bio":null,"website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/yc/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71179","name":"YC Events","slug":"yc-events","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-events/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/yc-founder-firesides-gusto-on-building-for-new-verticals/","excerpt":"Today, more than 200,000 businesses use Gusto for payroll, employee benefits, talent management, and more. And with the recent addition of Gusto Embedded, developers now use Gusto’s APIs and pre-build UI flows to embed payroll, tax filing, and payments infrastructure into products.","reading_time":5,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":null},{"id":"61fe29f1c7139e0001a71bf5","uuid":"c98e294b-23ed-4634-868d-00fe5de36cdc","title":"YC Jobs Series: Women Eng in Startups","slug":"yc-jobs-series-women-eng-in-startups","html":"<!--kg-card-begin: html--><p>This fall, YC and <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://elpha.com//">Elpha (S19)</a> will bring together a cohort of women engineers who are interested in finding roles at fast growing startups.</p>\n<p>YC will host a month-long series where participants will meet once a week for two-hour sessions. During sessions, you will hear from women who joined startups as early engineers, meet YC alumni and alumni company engineering managers, and build a community of peers. The program will culminate in at least two interviews for each participant.</p>\n<p>Topics discussed will include:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Why join a startup? What are the pros and cons? </li>\n<li>How do you determine where you should work and what should you look for in a startup and founding team?</li>\n<li>How to prepare for the interview process and interview practice</li>\n</ul>\n<p>Each session, we will also host small breakout sessions with founders, engineers and managers across a range of YC startups — from early stage to growth — including:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.workatastartup.com/events/yc-women-eng-in-startups-2021/">Christina Caccioppo, Cofounder & CEO of Vanta</a></li>\n<li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.workatastartup.com/events/yc-women-eng-in-startups-2021/">Cadran Cowansage, Cofounder & CEO of Elpha</a></li>\n<li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.workatastartup.com/events/yc-women-eng-in-startups-2021/">Diana Hu, Cofounder & CTO of Escher Reality and YC Visiting Partner</a></li>\n<li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.workatastartup.com/events/yc-women-eng-in-startups-2021/">Lucia Huang, Cofounder & CEO of Osmind</a></li>\n<li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.workatastartup.com/events/yc-women-eng-in-startups-2021/">Reshma Khilnani, Cofounder & CTO of MedXT and YC Visiting Partner</a></li>\n</ul>\n<p>If you are currently an engineer working at a tech company and you’re looking for your next role and might want to transition to a startup, this series is for you.</p>\n<p>To apply for the program, visit <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.workatastartup.com/events/yc-women-eng-in-startups-2021/">YC’s Work at a Startup</a> and create a profile by September 13th. (Note that profiles are visible to YC founders and hiring managers at YC startups. If you’re not ready to share your profile or look for a job, please specify so on the application.)</p>\n<p><b><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.workatastartup.com/events/yc-women-eng-in-startups-2021/">https://www.workatastartup.com/events/yc-women-eng-in-startups-2021
/nAt YC, we use an inclusive definition of “women” and welcome trans women as well as genderqueer and non-binary people who identify as women or femme in any way.</i></p>\n<!--kg-card-end: html-->","comment_id":"1104901","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/wordpress/2021/08/YC-Jobs-Series-Women-Eng-in-Startups.jpeg","featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2021-08-26T03:24:01.000-07:00","updated_at":"2021-10-20T10:51:47.000-07:00","published_at":"2021-08-26T03:24:01.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710a2","name":"Kat Mañalac","slug":"kat-manalac","profile_image":"https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/c15939b217561ebda4c129bfea5f65f3?s=512&d=mm&r=g","cover_image":null,"bio":"Kat is the Managing Outreach Officer at YC. She was Chief of Staff to Alexis Ohanian, cofounder of reddit, before joining YC as its Director of Outreach. Prior to that, Kat was at WIRED Magazine.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/kat-manalac/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7117b","name":"Ask a Female Engineer","slug":"ask-a-female-engineer","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/ask-a-female-engineer/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71177","name":"Jobs","slug":"jobs","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/jobs/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7117c","name":"Women Founders","slug":"women-founders","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/women-founders/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71171","name":"Work at a Startup","slug":"work-at-a-startup","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/work-at-a-startup/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71179","name":"YC Events","slug":"yc-events","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-events/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71178","name":"#jobs","slug":"hash-jobs","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"internal","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/404/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7119c","name":"#1781","slug":"hash-1781","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"internal","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/404/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7119d","name":"#1880","slug":"hash-1880","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"internal","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/404/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7119e","name":"#21930","slug":"hash-21930","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"internal","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/404/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710a2","name":"Kat Mañalac","slug":"kat-manalac","profile_image":"https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/c15939b217561ebda4c129bfea5f65f3?s=512&d=mm&r=g","cover_image":null,"bio":"Kat is the Managing Outreach Officer at YC. She was Chief of Staff to Alexis Ohanian, cofounder of reddit, before joining YC as its Director of Outreach. Prior to that, Kat was at WIRED Magazine.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/kat-manalac/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7117b","name":"Ask a Female Engineer","slug":"ask-a-female-engineer","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/ask-a-female-engineer/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/yc-jobs-series-women-eng-in-startups/","excerpt":"This fall, YC and Elpha (S19) will bring together a cohortof women engineers who are interested in finding roles at fast growing startups.YC will host a month-long series where participants will meet once a week fortwo-hour sessions. During sessions, you will hear from women who joined startupsas early engineers, meet YC alumni and alumni company engineering managers, andbuild a community of peers.","reading_time":1,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":null}]},"url":"/blog/announcing-yc-build-sprint-and-20-equity-free-grants","version":null,"rails_context":{"railsEnv":"production","inMailer":false,"i18nLocale":"en","i18nDefaultLocale":"en","href":"https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/announcing-yc-build-sprint-and-20-equity-free-grants","location":"/blog/announcing-yc-build-sprint-and-20-equity-free-grants","scheme":"https","host":"www.ycombinator.com","port":null,"pathname":"/blog/announcing-yc-build-sprint-and-20-equity-free-grants","search":null,"httpAcceptLanguage":"en, *","applyBatchLong":"Winter 2024","applyBatchShort":"W2024","applyDeadlineShort":"October 13","ycdcRetroMode":true,"currentUser":null,"serverSide":true},"id":"ycdc_new/pages/BlogPage-react-component-f4f82971-7e17-4dc4-80cf-7b3976c46dab","server_side":true}" data-reactroot=""> by Eric Migicovsky8/13/2020 We’re excited to announce our first-ever YC Build Sprint. This is a 4-week period to work intensively towards a defined goal alongside a community of thousands of other founders. The sprint will kick off on August 24 and be administered through our free Startup School platform. Also, we’ll be awarding 20 grants of $10,000 to winners selected from among the sprint participants! Sign up for Startup School and register for the sprint now. How does the sprint work? YC founders often discover that they’re especially productive in the weeks leading up to YC’s Demo Day. The external time pressure brings focus and increases motivation. With our Build Sprint, we hope to bring some of that focus and productivity to tens of thousands of founders in the wider community. When you sign up for the Build Sprint, you’ll be asked to write down a goal you’d like your startup to hit by September 20th. This goal should be specific, measurable, and hard but not impossible. Good goals would be “launch product and get first 3 customers” or “grow MRR to $1,000.” Bad goals would be “get to know my users better” (not measurable) or “send 20 emails to prospective customers” (too easy). Each week, when you submit your company update, we’ll ask you to report whether you’re on track to hit your goal. Your answer will appear prominently on your Startup School dashboard as extra motivation! Part of the magic of YC’s core batch program also comes from a set of peers who are supportive, but also competitive, which has the effect of motivating you to work even harder. To replicate this in the YC Build Sprint, we’ll require participants to attend video group sessions for 3 out of the 4 weeks, and prioritize matching founders with the same peers each week so that you can report progress on your specific goals to each other. The sprint ends September 20th, at which time you’ll be asked to report on whether your startup achieved the goal. We hope that by the end of the 4 weeks, you’ll have achieved more than you expected! Bringing back Startup School Grants Additionally, we’ve decided to continue our popular Startup School equity-free grant program in connection with this YC Build Sprint and provide 20 $10,000 grants to startups selected as winners from the Sprint participants. To be eligible for the grant, you need to complete all sprint requirements and submit an application for YC’s W2021 batch by September 231. You do not need to have achieved your sprint goal. (Please find the full official rules and selection criteria for the grant here2.) We’re excited to be bringing the Startup School grant back after a one year hiatus. Startup School grants are completely equity free. It’s one of the ways we choose to give back to the founder community. We hope the exceptional founders that win the Build Sprint grants will use this money to continue growing their companies and serving their users. 1. We ask grant applicants to submit a YC application to be eligible for two reasons. First, we believe that YC’s core program is a good fit for many of the promising startups that we’ll identify in the grant program, and we hope they take advantage of it. Secondly, the questions we ask on the YC application are the best criteria we know of for identifying great founders at scale, so plugging into that existing process will make it easier to identify and select grant winners. A founding team that is accepted to YC’s core program cannot additionally qualify for the grant. ↩ 2. Obligatory legal disclaimer: NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Open to early stage startup companies from all jurisdictions other than those sanctioned by OFAC. Begins 12:00 a.m. PT 08/24/2020, registration ends at 11:59 p.m. PT 08/30/2020 and the promotion ends 8:00 p.m. PT 09/23/2020. To enter, register, set your Sprint Goal, provide weekly updates, attend 3 virtual group sessions, report final progress and apply to the YC Core Program. 20 winners will each receive a $10,000 cash prize (total ARV of $200,000). For full Official Rules, visit https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YSvivbXQGTH8bHLTfIwjzNwkUGcwZfuXZJrsL2EFF2k. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED. Sponsor: Y Combinator Management, LLC. ↩ Categories Other Posts Eric is a Group Partner at YC. He founded Pebble Technology (YC W11), which was acquired by Fitbit in 2016. While studying engineering at the University of Waterloo in 2008, Eric began building smartAnnouncing YC Build Sprint and 20 Equity-Free Grants
Author
Eric Migicovsky