register now for the new track.</p>\n<p>Historically, Startup School has focused on supporting founders actively working on their companies. Last November we decided to expand our mission by launching a <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://blog.ycombinator.com/startup-school-for-future-founders//">new track</a> for future founders. That program was extremely popular — over 30,000 aspiring founders participated, and thousands more have signed up for the waitlist since!</p>\n<p>Given that demand, we’ve decided to make the track a permanent part of Startup School. Starting today, founders will be able to access the Aspiring Founders program (formerly known as Future Founders) at any time. The track consists of 17 videos and essays by YC group partners and 6 self-directed exercises. These can be completed on your schedule.</p>\n<p>Of course, there’s no replacement for first-hand experience when starting a startup. Founders who enroll in the Aspiring Founders track and later take the leap to start a company are welcome to switch to the Active Founder track at any time. There they will find more resources, materials and a large community of founders actively working on their companies.</p>\n<p>Whatever stage you’re at in your startup journey, we invite you to <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.startupschool.org//">join Startup School</a> and benefit from the best resource on the internet for learning how to build a startup!</p>\n<!--kg-card-end: html-->","comment_id":"1104749","feature_image":null,"featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2021-03-16T01:57:53.000-07:00","updated_at":"2021-10-20T10:52:05.000-07:00","published_at":"2021-03-16T01:57:53.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710a5","name":"Kyle Corbitt","slug":"kyle-corbitt","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/kyle.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Kyle Corbitt is a software developer at Y Combinator. He spends most of his time creating software to support our founders as they build their businesses. Before joining YC he ran his own startup.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/kyle-corbitt/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7117f","name":"Startup School","slug":"startup-school","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/startup-school/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","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-news/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71180","name":"#startup-school","slug":"hash-startup-school","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":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710a5","name":"Kyle Corbitt","slug":"kyle-corbitt","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/kyle.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Kyle Corbitt is a software developer at Y Combinator. He spends most of his time creating software to support our founders as they build their businesses. Before joining YC he ran his own startup.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/kyle-corbitt/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7117f","name":"Startup School","slug":"startup-school","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/startup-school/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/startup-school-aspiring-founders-track-relaunches/","excerpt":"Starting today, we’re reopening the Startup School Aspiring Founders track as acontinuous course. This track is intended for potential founders who areinterested in starting a company in the future. You can register now for the new track.Historically, Startup School has focused on supporting founders actively workingon their companies. Last November we decided to expand our mission by launchinga new track [https://blog.ycombinator.","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},{"id":"61fe29f1c7139e0001a71bd7","uuid":"74e25555-6a97-4d45-9913-cc848236acd6","title":"YC Build Sprint Winter 2021","slug":"yc-build-sprint-winter-2021","html":"<!--kg-card-begin: html--><p>We’re delighted to announce the launch of <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://blog.ycombinator.com/announcing-yc-build-sprint-and-20-equity-free-grants//">another YC Build Sprint through <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.startupschool.org//">Startup School</a>! It will begin on February 15 and end on March 14. Signups just opened, so you can <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.startupschool.org/sprint/register/">register for the sprint</a> now.</p>\n<p>The Build Sprint is an opportunity for intense focus on your startup or side-project for a specific period of time. For existing startups, this may involve a push towards launching a specific feature or reaching a certain milestone. For new founders, this is an opportunity to take the plunge and begin work on a project that excites you.</p>\n<p>At the start of the sprint, you’ll register your four-week goal. As the sprint progresses, you’ll be able to track your progress, get feedback from YC group partners and team members, and have weekly meetings with other sprint participants to provide accountability. The sprint culminates with the <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/">YC application deadline</a>.</p>\n<p><strong>Getting feedback from YC</strong></p>\n<p>One consistent request we get from Startup School participants and YC applicants alike is more feedback from the YC team. For the upcoming sprint, we’re committing to provide more founder feedback than ever before. Each week, we’ll issue a public challenge to sprint participants and give personalized feedback to those who participate. We’ll also have weekly calls with YC partners and experts that will answer participant questions.</p>\n<p>Finally, in a first for YC, we’ll provide actionable feedback on 1,000<sup id=\"footnoteid1\"><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnote1\">1</a></sup> YC S2021 applications submitted by sprint participants. Historically, we haven’t systematically provided personalized feedback on applications that don’t make it to the interview stage because of resource constraints. In the spirit of doing things that don’t scale, however, we’re going to get it done!</p>\n<p><strong>Want a sprint buddy?</strong></p>\n<p>If like many aspiring founders you haven’t gotten started because you haven’t found the right person to work with yet, we’d like to help! As part of Startup School, we recently launched a (still in beta) co-founder matching service. We expect most successful co-founder relationships will take months or years to build a strong foundation, but working on a Build Sprint project together is a great way to stress test a new relationship. If this sounds interesting to you, sign up for Startup School and <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.startupschool.org/cofounder_matching/">create a co-founder matching profile now</a>.</p>\n<p><strong>Let’s go</strong></p>\n<p>Build Sprint <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.startupschool.org/sprint/register/">signups are open now</a>. Looking forward to seeing you there!</p>\n<p>///</p>\n<p><b id=\"footnote1\">1.</b> If possible, we’d like to provide an actionable piece of feedback to everyone who completes the Build Sprint and submits a YC application. But we’re not sure how long that will take, so we’re only committing to provide feedback on 1,000 applications for now to be safe. <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnoteid1\">↩</a></p>\n<!--kg-card-end: html-->","comment_id":"1104704","feature_image":null,"featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2021-02-02T01:00:23.000-08:00","updated_at":"2021-10-20T10:52:10.000-07:00","published_at":"2021-02-02T01:00:23.000-08:00","custom_excerpt":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710a5","name":"Kyle Corbitt","slug":"kyle-corbitt","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/kyle.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Kyle Corbitt is a software developer at Y Combinator. He spends most of his time creating software to support our founders as they build their businesses. Before joining YC he ran his own startup.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/kyle-corbitt/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7117f","name":"Startup School","slug":"startup-school","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/startup-school/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","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-news/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71180","name":"#startup-school","slug":"hash-startup-school","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":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710a5","name":"Kyle Corbitt","slug":"kyle-corbitt","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/kyle.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Kyle Corbitt is a software developer at Y Combinator. He spends most of his time creating software to support our founders as they build their businesses. Before joining YC he ran his own startup.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/kyle-corbitt/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7117f","name":"Startup School","slug":"startup-school","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/startup-school/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/yc-build-sprint-winter-2021/","excerpt":"We’re delighted to announce the launch of another YC Build Sprint through Startup School ! It willbegin on February 15 and end on March 14. Signups just opened, so you can register for the sprint now.The Build Sprint is an opportunity for intense focus on your startup orside-project for a specific period of time.","reading_time":2,"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":"61fe29f1c7139e0001a71bc6","uuid":"62f45fe5-cdb0-4db7-a3f3-a02ffb6358b8","title":"Startup School for Future Founders","slug":"startup-school-for-future-founders","html":"<!--kg-card-begin: html--><p>We launched Startup School as an online program in 2017 to support founders actively working on building their companies. On November 9th, we’re also opening Startup School to potential founders who are interested in starting a company in the future. You can <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.startupschool.org/future-founders/">register for the new course today.</p>\n<p>Startup School has been extremely successful at helping active founders grow their companies, serving over 140,000 founders to date! That said, our online program has never been a great fit for individuals who hadn’t yet decided what to work on — in fact, you couldn’t even complete registration if you weren’t actively working on a startup.</p>\n<p>So starting November 9th, we’re pleased to announce a new Startup School course, which we’re calling Startup School for Future Founders. This course will run for 6 weeks and is designed for students, engineers, creatives and anyone who is thinking about founding a startup at some point, but not actively working on one right now.</p>\n<p>We’ve developed a new curriculum for this track targeted at future founders, including YC classics like <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/library/6g-how-to-talk-to-users/">How to Talk to Users</a> and <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://www.paulgraham.com/before.html/">Before the Startup</a>, as well as new lectures by YC partners like How to Find Incredible Startup Ideas. We’ve also built high-impact exercises to put those learnings into practice, covering key early topics such as generating good startup ideas, finding/vetting a co-founder and validating your idea with potential customers.</p>\n<p>When you’re ready to take the next step and actually start working on a company, Startup School can help there too. Future Founder participants can switch to an active founder profile at any time to take advantage of our partner deals, weekly updates, group sessions and expanded curriculum. We’re also very excited to launch a co-founder matching service for our community soon. There are thousands of founders on Startup School actively looking for a co-founder right now, so talented prospective founders won’t even need to come up with their own idea — they can just look for an existing team that they mesh with!</p>\n<p>Finally, we’ve also been contacted by universities, incubators and entrepreneurship centers interested in incorporating Startup School content into their curriculum. The Startup School for Future Founders content and exercises are a great fit for universities looking to share market-tested entrepreneurship advice. Feel free to incorporate them into your curriculum! If you’re a professor or advisor interested in using our content, please <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/author/\"mailto:startupschool@ycombinator.com/">let us know</a>! We’d love to support you however we can.</p>\n<p>If you’re interested in starting a startup someday, or know someone who is, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.startupschool.org/future-founders/">sign up</a> for Startup School now.</p>\n<!--kg-card-end: html-->","comment_id":"1104571","feature_image":null,"featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2020-10-28T02:00:32.000-07:00","updated_at":"2021-10-20T10:52:23.000-07:00","published_at":"2020-10-28T02:00:32.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710a5","name":"Kyle Corbitt","slug":"kyle-corbitt","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/kyle.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Kyle Corbitt is a software developer at Y Combinator. He spends most of his time creating software to support our founders as they build their businesses. Before joining YC he ran his own startup.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/kyle-corbitt/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7117f","name":"Startup School","slug":"startup-school","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/startup-school/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","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-news/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71180","name":"#startup-school","slug":"hash-startup-school","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":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710a5","name":"Kyle Corbitt","slug":"kyle-corbitt","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/kyle.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Kyle Corbitt is a software developer at Y Combinator. He spends most of his time creating software to support our founders as they build their businesses. Before joining YC he ran his own startup.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/kyle-corbitt/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7117f","name":"Startup School","slug":"startup-school","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/startup-school/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/startup-school-for-future-founders/","excerpt":"We launched Startup School as an online program in 2017 to support foundersactively working on building their companies. On November 9th, we’re alsoopening Startup School to potential founders who are interested in starting acompany in the future. You can register for the new course today.","reading_time":2,"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":"61fe29f1c7139e0001a71baa","uuid":"bb830111-9327-4089-b890-8bdab70b3d5c","title":"Startup School Relaunching as Continuous Program","slug":"startup-school-relaunch","html":"<!--kg-card-begin: html--><p>We’re excited to announce that Startup School (SUS) is relaunching today as a continuous program. This change will allow us to serve many more founders than the traditional annual course we’ve been running since 2017 and better support startup founders year-round.</p>\n<p>In addition to this change to continuous admissions, we’ve revamped the Startup School experience to double down on the things our founders have found most useful. Through thousands of founder surveys and dozens of interviews, we’ve discovered that founders get value from SUS in three key areas: <strong>curriculum, accountability and community</strong>. We’re making changes program-wide to better focus on those pillars.</p>\n<p><strong>Curriculum</strong></p>\n<p>Startup School’s video lectures and text library are our differentiator. No other resource online so efficiently condenses the information you need to start a company in 2020. With our relaunch, we’re making that curriculum even better.</p>\n<p>We’ve completely redesigned our <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.startupschool.org/curriculum/">curriculum page</a> to include both recorded lectures and high-value written content. Additionally, we’ve heard from founders that not all lectures are relevant to their specific circumstances, so we’re personalizing the required program curriculum based on your company’s stage (idea, launch or growth). We’re also making it easy to skip content that isn’t relevant to your company right now. Finally, we’ve made it easier to consume our content in whatever order makes sense for your company, since everyone is at a different place. <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.startupschool.org/register/">Sign up now</a> to get access to these features!</p>\n<p><strong>Accountability</strong></p>\n<p>One reason founders keep coming back to Startup School, in many cases even after participating in <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/about/#whatwedo\">YC’s core program</a>, is because SUS gives them structure and accountability. We ask founders to submit weekly company updates tracking their goals and most important metrics. These updates encourage founders to talk to users and launch quickly. Consistent progress every week is a prerequisite for success, and updates are one way to track that. As part of our relaunch, we’re introducing <strong>streaks</strong>. SUS will track the number of consecutive weeks you’ve submitted an update as your streak number, which is important for certification and qualifying for special SUS opportunities. We hope this gives founders extra motivation to consistently work on their company week after week.</p>\n<p><strong>Community</strong></p>\n<p>Starting a company can be lonely, especially for the majority of SUS founders that live outside traditional startup hubs. Founders come to Startup School for the personalized advice and camaraderie that a strong community provides. Over 100,000 founders have signed up for Startup School since 2018, and we’re continually improving the quality of our growing community through active moderation and new features.</p>\n<p>For the new relaunch, we are providing exclusive forums for later-stage companies where they can discuss issues specific to their situation. We’re also improving the matching algorithm used for our weekly small-group video calls. Finally, we have new features planned for local founder communities in hundreds of cities around the world, but we’re waiting to roll those out until in-person meetups become less of a safety risk.</p>\n<p><strong>Startup School: It’s about the journey, not the destination</strong></p>\n<p>We’ve always considered Startup School an ongoing program that alumni can return to again and again for content, accountability and community. But the course format — with specific enrollment and graduation dates — didn’t support that message. For our relaunch, we’re doing away with the concept of graduation entirely and replacing it with a <strong>Startup School Certified</strong> achievement. This change makes it clear that getting certified is just the beginning of your startup (and Startup School!) journey, not an end in and of itself. To get certified, founders must (1) review all relevant Startup School curriculum, (2) participate in at least one weekly group session, and (3) complete an 8-week streak submitting updates. Founders can choose to share their public profile including certification status as evidence of their participation in the program.</p>\n<p>Startup School will continue to offer founders access to the forum, a record of progress via weekly updates, group sessions with fellow founders, and deals to help accelerate startup growth from partners like AWS, GCP, and Stripe. To learn more about the structure and features of Startup School, read our <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.startupschool.org/about/">About page and <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.startupschool.org/faq/">FAQs./n
New faces</strong></p>\n<p>Since our last course began, we’ve added two new faces to the Startup School team! Joan DeGennaro, a YC alumnus and former Startup School mentor, has joined as our full-time community manager. Joan is focusing on providing the best user experience for our founders and making Startup School an inclusive community. Catheryn Li is a product engineer joining us from Facebook. Cat has reimagined core elements of Startup School with a user-centered approach and built much of the new functionality for our relaunch.</p>\n<p><strong>Sign up today!</strong></p>\n<p>Enrollment in the new program opened today! If you’re a founder there’s no better place to find the support you need to build a successful startup. <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.startupschool.org/register/">Sign up now</a> and let’s build something amazing together!</p>\n<!--kg-card-end: html-->","comment_id":"1104342","feature_image":null,"featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2020-06-17T02:00:35.000-07:00","updated_at":"2021-10-20T10:52:40.000-07:00","published_at":"2020-06-17T02:00:35.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710a5","name":"Kyle Corbitt","slug":"kyle-corbitt","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/kyle.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Kyle Corbitt is a software developer at Y Combinator. He spends most of his time creating software to support our founders as they build their businesses. Before joining YC he ran his own startup.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/kyle-corbitt/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7117f","name":"Startup School","slug":"startup-school","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/startup-school/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","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-news/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71180","name":"#startup-school","slug":"hash-startup-school","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":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710a5","name":"Kyle Corbitt","slug":"kyle-corbitt","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/kyle.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Kyle Corbitt is a software developer at Y Combinator. He spends most of his time creating software to support our founders as they build their businesses. Before joining YC he ran his own startup.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/kyle-corbitt/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7117f","name":"Startup School","slug":"startup-school","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/startup-school/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/startup-school-relaunch/","excerpt":"We’re excited to announce that Startup School (SUS) is relaunching today as acontinuous program. This change will allow us to serve many more founders thanthe traditional annual course we’ve been running since 2017 and better supportstartup founders year-round.In addition to this change to continuous admissions, we’ve revamped the StartupSchool experience to double down on the things our founders have found mostuseful.","reading_time":3,"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":"61fe29f1c7139e0001a71a02","uuid":"22268f87-dc17-40b5-896e-c13fc2300495","title":"13 Startup Ideas","slug":"13-startup-ideas","html":"<!--kg-card-begin: html--><p>Hey, my name is Kyle Corbitt and I’m a software developer at Y Combinator. I spend most of my time creating software to support our founders as they build their businesses. Before joining YC I ran my own startup.</p>\n<p>When I was in high school, I sometimes got the frustrating feeling that all of the good startup ideas had been taken before I had a chance to work on them myself. As I’ve gotten a bit older and gained more experience, I’ve found that valuable startup ideas aren’t actually a scarce resource. In fact, they’re only becoming more abundant — as the world moves faster and more new businesses are created, more novel niches appear for profitable, productive companies.</p>\n<p>With that in mind, we asked YC alumni and staff for startup ideas that they wish existed but aren’t currently working on.</p>\n<p>Interested in pursuing one of these ideas? Please get in touch at <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"mailto:kyle@ycombinator.com\">kyle@ycombinator.com</a> — I’d love to chat about your plans, and I may be able to put you in touch with the idea’s author or other good resources. Also, if you have your own great idea that you’d like to see in a future version of this list, let me know! If we see community interest we’re thinking about creating a larger repository for ideas like these.</p>\n<p><em>[Edit: Since publishing, I’ve received hundreds of email responses. I’m so excited by the enthusiastic response — I think there’s really something worth building here! However, due to time constraints I won’t be able to continue responding to most of the emails I get or putting people in contact with the idea authors. If you want to reach out anyway, please include “13 Startups” in the subject line.]</em></p>\n<hr />\n<p><strong>AI for Communicating with Dogs</strong><br />\nUse the immense amount of video footage captures of interactions with dogs to predict what behaviors will happen based on what the dog is doing i.e. predict that your dog is in pain, or hungry or thirsty etc. (Note: this might sound a little crazy but this has been done already for <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/artificial-intelligence-learns-spot-pain-sheep/">identifying pain in sheep</a>.)<br />\n<em>Elizabeth Iorns, Science Exchange S11</em></p>\n<p><strong>Smart Bathroom</strong><br />\nHealthcare in the U.S. is a $3.2 trillion industry. Individuals take care of most of their health needs in the bathroom (bms, urine, teeth, hygiene, et cetera). All this data is literally flushed down the drain. Big opportunity to install a virtual doctor’s office in everyone’s bathroom, collecting data and providing feedback to help people reduce cost on health and wellness while achieving much better outcomes. New types of sensors and great data analysis and UX is needed to make the smart bathrooms a reality.<br />\n<em>Breck Yunits, NudgePad S09</em></p>\n<p><strong>Accounts Receivables as a Service</strong><br />\nIt can be a huge pain to get enterprises to pay their vendors, even after contracts are signed. It’s one of those business inefficiencies that they’re not inclined to fix because there’s little downside to them paying late. Handing it off to a “collections agency” seems aggressive and most startups won’t do it, but I think something like an outsourced AR service that appears to be from the company but is actually a third party could be great. Potentially a mix of $/mo+% of revenue or $/mo depending at different tiers depending on how many transactions.<br />\n<em>Yuri Sagalov, AeroFS S10/Y Combinator</em></p>\n<p><strong>Baby Bidet</strong><br />\nA semi-automatic baby bidet where you could sit them over the sink and clean out the yuck simply and without having to touch it. Could work well as a kickstarter.<br />\n<em>Jeffrey Engler, Wright Electric W17</em></p>\n<p><strong>Securitized Assets on the Blockchain</strong><br />\nI would be working on making it easier to securitize and create a market for unique assets on the blockchain. There are many types of new securities and types of assets being created, not only tokens but anything else that can be bought or sold. In theory you could sell those on the blockchain currently, but you’d have to spin up and create your own blockchain in its entirety. It seems like that’s something you should be able to do as a service; I have some asset and I’d like a blockchain for it, and I’ll pay a monthly fee. I’d build that if I had time.<br />\n<em>Austen Allred, Lambda School S17</em></p>\n<p><strong>Renewable Energy from Engineered Microbes</strong><br />\nMicrobes are outstandingly powerful and have the potential to be engineered to do almost anything. If I had more time, I would love to look more into the idea of engineering a bacteria that could efficiently convert a renewable resource into a usable fuel. Obviously, many microbes already exist that can do this, and so I would like to do more research into why this is not an option in common practice yet, and what strategies could be developed to make it possible here and now. Is the problem that the fuels they are making are incompatible with our current infrastructure (e.g. the microbes make ethanol, and most cars run on gas)? Or is the problem that bugs that can make usable fuel do so inefficiently, and thus need to be engineered to produce sufficient quantities in a cost-effective manner and/or on a reasonable time scale? In short, what problem(s) need to be solved to utilize microbes as fuel sources?<br />\n<em>Zack Abbott, Z-Biotics Fellowship</em></p>\n<p><strong>Adwords for Outdoor and Transit Advertising</strong><br />\nBillboards are still sold manually by sales teams. You literally cannot buy a billboard online. If people could buy them as easily as you buy an Adwords ad, maybe many more small companies would.<br />\n<em>Jared Friedman, Scribd S06/Y Combinator</em></p>\n<p><strong>Design on Demand</strong><br />\nUpload a photo of furniture of a piece of home decor, and select between “find” or “match” options. The “find” option would bring up very similar options and let you sort by price point and delivery time, so you could find the Crate and Barrel knock off of that designer table you saw in a magazine. The “match” option would recommends items that go well stylistically with that item. All of that instantly delivered through an app or website.<br />\n<em>Kathryn Minshew, The Muse W12</em></p>\n<p><strong>Low-Friction Lending Library</strong><br />\nMost people end up accumulating dozens or hundreds of items that they only need a few times a year. In my case these are things like camping equipment, a soldering iron, an electric drill, paper cutter, etc. — but everybody has their own unique list. I’d much rather not have to keep track of all this infrequently-used inventory and instead rent it on demand, especially since I have limited storage space. Lending libraries for this type of stuff exist but are too high-friction to be popular today — it’s substantially easier to just buy something on Amazon than rent it from a local depot. I think with automated inventory management and (potentially) sidewalk delivery bots the cost and friction can be brought low enough to turn this into a popular and defensible subscription business.<br />\n<em>Kyle Corbitt, Y Combinator</em></p>\n<p><strong>Make Technology Relatable and Accessible</strong><br />\nTechnology is advancing at a rapid pace and it can be overwhelming and scary for people that don’t understand the underlying principles or have a safe place to ask questions and be taught. Think about how frustrated you get trying to explain to your grandfather why Facebook isn’t working when the Wi-Fi isn’t connected and what wi-fi is or browsers are. This is most pronounced with seniors but applies also to lots of people that don’t work in tech. It is only getting worse with topics like AI and cryptocurrency. Build a service that makes technology accessible and not scary for older or non tech savvy people. We need a text/call and software based solution with really great people on the other end who don’t judge, but explain concepts simply — someone who will help and doesn’t make anyone feel dumb. Ultimately the goal would be to make people of all types more technologically conversant while build ing a membership and/or e-commerce business model.<br />\n<em>Avni Patel Thompson, Poppy W16</em></p>\n<p><strong>Buyer’s Remorse Insurance</strong><br />\nMoney back guarantee for art buyers: Buying fine art has a steep learning curve. Firstly, galleries are very uninviting. Then, when you get inside, the sales process is super unclear. A final barrier is that art is very arbitrarily priced, and as a new buyer it’s hard to know if you will get buyer’s remorse and feel like you overpaid for something. To overcome this, offer insurance that galleries can offer to buy art back from the purchaser if the purchaser is unsatisfied. Lowered risk for buyers => Increased spend, and you take some of that increased revenue.<br />\n<em>Justin Kan, Justin.TV/Twitch W07</em></p>\n<p><strong>Social Network for Children</strong><br />\nThis is a super tough nut to crack. You have to be cool and offer a safe and private environment for kids to communicate with each other while enabling trusted adults to peer in/interact, etc… The company that can build something that is used and useful for all parties can build something of great value throughout a person’s entire life.<br />\n<em>Holly Liu, Kabam/Y Combinator</em></p>\n<p><strong>Modern Firefighting</strong><br />\nClimate change is already having real consequences on our society, and this year has been one of the worst years for wildfire in history, leaving entire neighborhoods flattened. Fire fighting and the tools we use to fight fires haven’t changed much in 100 years. Sprinklers were a big innovation for homes, but forest fires are often spotted and fought in the same way we did many decades ago. With the arrival of autonomous drones, industrial drones, better sensors and better prediction we should be able do a better job saving our forests, cities and firefighters.<br />\n<em>Gustaf Alstromer, Y Combinator</em></p>\n<!--kg-card-end: html-->","comment_id":"1101201","feature_image":null,"featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2017-11-16T00:59:57.000-08:00","updated_at":"2021-10-20T12:21:32.000-07:00","published_at":"2017-11-16T00:59:57.000-08:00","custom_excerpt":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710a5","name":"Kyle Corbitt","slug":"kyle-corbitt","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/kyle.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Kyle Corbitt is a software developer at Y Combinator. He spends most of his time creating software to support our founders as they build their businesses. 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We’re excited to announce that Startup School (SUS) is relaunching today as acontinuous program. This change will allow us to serve many more founders thanthe traditional annual course we’ve been running since 2017 and better supportstartup founders year-round.In addition to this change to continuous admissions, we’ve revamped the StartupSchool experience to double down on the things our founders have found mostuseful.
Hey, my name is Kyle Corbitt and I’m a software developer at Y Combinator. Ispend most of my time creating software to support our founders as they buildtheir businesses. Before joining YC I ran my own startup.When I was in high school, I sometimes got the frustrating feeling that all ofthe good startup ideas had been taken before I had a chance to work on themmyself.
