co-founder matching platform</a> about 3 months ago. There are now 16,000 co-founder profiles on the platform. Potential co-founders have sent 130,000 matching invites through the platform, and, with a 25% acceptance rate, we’ve seen a total of 33,000 matches.</p><p>We now have enough data to identify some interesting trends among our co-founder profiles and matches.</p><h1 id=\"who-are-the-founders-on-our-platform\"><strong>Who are the founders on our platform?</strong></h1><ul><li>40% of profiles are from the U.S., with 60% representing another 145<br>countries.</li><li>42% identify as technical (i.e. “a programmer, scientist, or engineer<br>who can build the product without outside assistance”).</li><li>43% are working full-time (40+ hours/week) on their startup, 22% are<br>part-time (20-40 hours/week), and the remaining spend &lt;20<br>hours/week on their startup.</li><li>Of the founders who are not currently working on a startup, 47% plan<br>to start in the next 3 months, and another 21% plan to start in the<br>next 6 months.</li><li>13% identify as a woman.</li></ul><h1 id=\"what-do-founders-care-about\"><strong>What do founders care about?</strong></h1><p>We give founders the option to mark their preferences for a co-founder across several attributes, including:</p><ul><li>Whether they are technical</li><li>Areas of skill (<em><em>Product, Design, Engineering, Sales and Marketing,</em></em><br><em><em>Operations</em></em>)</li><li>Their level of time commitment over the next few weeks (40+<br>hours/week, 20-40 hours/week, or less)</li><li>Their location</li><li>Whether they have shared interests (e.g. <em><em>B2B/Enterprise, Biotech,</em></em><br>etc.)</li></ul><p>Founders also indicate how important each attribute is: whether it’s a must-have, whether they have a preference but are flexible, or whether they don’t care at all.</p><p>The two most important attributes: <strong><strong>79% of founders care that their co-founder can commit a certain number of hours over the next few weeks</strong></strong>, and <strong><strong>74% of founders prefer to have shared interests with their co-founder</strong></strong>. However, only 15% and 13% see these attributes as must-haves, respectively.</p><p>The least important attribute? <strong><strong>50% of founders don’t care where their co-founder is located, perhaps a sign of the (newly remote) times</strong></strong>.</p><h1 id=\"what-industries-are-founders-interested-in\"><strong>What industries are founders interested in?</strong></h1><p>Each founder can select interests from the following list: <em><em>Agriculture/Agtech, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality (ARVR), B2B/Enterprise, Biomedical/Biotech, Blockchain, Consumer, E-Commerce, Education/Edtech, Energy, Entertainment, Financial/Fintech, Government, Hardware, Hard Tech, Healthcare, Marketplace, Non-Profit.</em></em></p><p>The top 6 most popular interests:</p><ul><li><em><em>B2B/Enterprise</em></em> (36% of founders indicate interest)</li><li><em><em>Consumer</em></em> (34%)</li><li><em><em>AI</em></em> (34%)</li><li><em><em>Marketplace</em></em> (32%)</li><li><em><em>Fintech</em></em> (29%)</li><li><em><em>E-Commerce</em></em> (29%)</li></ul><p>Most founders select several interests; the median number of interests selected is 3. Interestingly, the most popular interests among founders who pick only 1 interest look different:</p><ul><li><em><em>B2B/Enterprise</em></em> (17%)</li><li><em><em>Fintech</em></em> (13%)</li><li><em><em>Edtech</em></em> (12%)</li><li><em><em>Consumer</em></em> (11%)</li><li><em><em>Healthcare</em></em> (7%)</li><li><em><em>AI</em></em> (7%)</li></ul><h1 id=\"what-skills-are-founders-interested-in\"><strong>What skills are founders interested in?</strong></h1><p>Founders on the co-founder matching platform can claim responsibility in five areas of skill: <em><em>Product, Design, Engineering, Sales and Marketing, Operations.</em></em></p><ul><li>65% of founders do <em><em>Product</em></em></li><li>57% of founders do <em><em>Operations</em></em></li><li>52% of founders do <em><em>Sales and Marketing</em></em></li><li>37% of founders do <em><em>Design</em></em></li><li>31% of founders do <em><em>Engineering</em></em></li></ul><p>Here’s what founders want from their co-founder:</p><ul><li>62% of founders prefer a co-founder who does <em><em>Engineering</em></em></li><li>42% of founders prefer a co-founder who does <em><em>Product</em></em></li><li>39% of founders prefer a co-founder who does <em><em>Design</em></em></li><li>37% of founders prefer a co-founder who does <em><em>Sales and Marketing</em></em></li><li>28% of founders prefer a co-founder who does <em><em>Operations</em></em></li></ul><p>Engineers seem to be in high demand. Among founders who do not do <em><em>Engineering</em></em>, <strong><strong>80% prefer a co-founder who does <em><em>Engineering</em></em></strong></strong>. Even engineers themselves are looking for more engineers: <strong><strong>44% of <em><em>Engineering</em></em> founders prefer a co-founder who does <em><em>Engineering</em></em></strong></strong>.</p><p>Engineers are also looking for complementary skills though: <strong><strong>74% of <em><em>Engineering</em></em> founders prefer a co-founder who does <em><em>Sales and Marketing</em></em></strong></strong>, and <strong><strong>53% of <em><em>Engineering</em></em> founders prefer a co-founder who does <em><em>Operations</em></em></strong></strong>.</p><h1 id=\"who%E2%80%99s-actually-matching\"><strong>Who’s actually matching?</strong></h1><ul><li><strong><strong>Founders</strong></strong> on the platform have an average of <strong><strong>3.6 matches per person.</strong></strong></li><li><strong><strong>Engineers</strong></strong> on the platform have an average of <strong><strong>4.8 matches per person.</strong></strong></li><li><strong><strong>Founders who aren’t married to an idea</strong></strong> have an average of <strong><strong>5.1 matches</strong></strong><br><strong><strong>per person.</strong></strong></li></ul><p>The majority of matches (68%) are made up of a technical founder paired with a non-technical founder. A bigger majority of matches (72%) are made up of founders with at least one shared interest. An even greater portion of matches (73%) are made up of a founder with an idea they’re working on paired with a founder not glued to an idea.</p><p>55% of matches comprise founders located in the same country. 69% of matches are between founders in the same continent, and 61% of matches are composed of founders located within 3 time zones of each other. The rest, apparently, are from all over the world.</p><p>73% of matches contain at least one full-time founder, and 92% of matches contain at least one founder who is “active” (working on a startup idea now) rather than “aspiring” (plan to work on a startup later).</p><p>Finally, it seems that founders on the site are extremely active: 75% of all matches are accepted within 4.5 days of the initial invitation, and <strong><strong>50% of matches are accepted within 22 hours</strong></strong>. Of the matches where founders indicate having met up either online or in person, <strong><strong>50% met within 6.2 days</strong></strong>.</p><p><strong><strong>If you are looking for a co-founder, come check out the co-founder matching platform! Sign up at <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/cofounder-matching/">https://www.ycombinator.com/cofounder-matching.

","comment_id":"6172e54bcf1ec1000121a4f6","feature_image":"https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1522202176988-66273c2fd55f?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=MnwxMTc3M3wwfDF8c2VhcmNofDI4fHxzdGFydHVwfGVufDB8fHx8MTYzNDkyMDcxMw&ixlib=rb-1.2.1&q=80&w=2000%22,%22featured%22:false,%22visibility%22:%22public%22,%22email_recipient_filter%22:%22none%22,%22created_at%22:%222021-10-22T09:22:35.000-07:00%22,%22updated_at%22:%222021-10-22T13:07:58.000-07:00%22,%22published_at%22:%222021-10-21T09:22:00.000-07:00%22,%22custom_excerpt%22:%22YC launched a co-founder matching platform about 3 months ago. There are now 16,000 co-founder profiles on the platform. Potential co-founders have sent 130,000 matching invites through the platform, and, with a 25% acceptance rate, we’ve seen a total of 33,000 matches.","codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"tags":[{"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/"},{"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/"}],"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71081","name":"Catheryn Li","slug":"catheryn","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/10/catheryn.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Catheryn (Cat) is a Product Engineer at YC focused on Startup School. Before that she was an engineer at Instagram and Facebook. Cat has a B.S. in Computer Science and Math from MIT.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/catheryn/"},{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710d6","name":"Katherine Bernstein","slug":"katherine-bernstein","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/Katherine-1.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Katherine is a Product Engineer at Y Combinator, working on the Startup School team. Prior to YC, she was a co-founder and software engineer at OpenLattice.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/katherine-bernstein/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71081","name":"Catheryn Li","slug":"catheryn","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/10/catheryn.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Catheryn (Cat) is a Product Engineer at YC focused on Startup School. Before that she was an engineer at Instagram and Facebook. Cat has a B.S. in Computer Science and Math from MIT.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/catheryn/"},"primary_tag":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/what-do-people-want-in-a-co-founder/","excerpt":"YC launched a co-founder matching platform about 3 months ago. There are now 16,000 co-founder profiles on the platform. Potential co-founders have sent 130,000 matching invites through the platform, and, with a 25% acceptance rate, we’ve seen a total of 33,000 matches.","reading_time":4,"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":"Photo by <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://unsplash.com/@brookecagle?utm_source=ghost&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=api-credit\%22>Brooke Cagle</a> / <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=ghost&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=api-credit\%22>Unsplash%22},%22mentions%22:[],%22related_posts%22:[{%22id%22:%2261fe29f1c7139e0001a71bb4%22,%22uuid%22:%2237e72533-683c-4424-a52c-2675cc66e0f2%22,%22title%22:%22Announcing YC Build Sprint and 20 Equity-Free Grants","slug":"announcing-yc-build-sprint-and-20-equity-free-grants","html":"<!--kg-card-begin: html--><p>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! <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.startupschool.org/dashboard/">Sign up</a> for Startup School and <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.startupschool.org/sprint/register/">register for the sprint</a> now.</p>\n<p><strong>How does the sprint work?</strong></p>\n<p>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.</p>\n<p>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).</p>\n<p>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!</p>\n<p>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.</p>\n<p>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!</p>\n<p><strong>Bringing back Startup School Grants</strong></p>\n<p>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 <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/">submit an application</a> for YC’s W2021 batch by September 23<sup id=\"footnoteid1\"><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnote1\">1</a></sup>. You do not need to have achieved your sprint goal. (Please find the full official rules and selection criteria for the grant <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YSvivbXQGTH8bHLTfIwjzNwkUGcwZfuXZJrsL2EFF2k/edit/">herehttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1YSvivbXQGTH8bHLTfIwjzNwkUGcwZfuXZJrsL2EFF2k. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED. Sponsor: Y Combinator Management, LLC. <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnoteid2\">↩</a></p>\n<!--kg-card-end: html-->","comment_id":"1104430","feature_image":null,"featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2020-08-13T01:51:04.000-07:00","updated_at":"2021-10-20T10:52:34.000-07:00","published_at":"2020-08-13T01:51:04.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71090","name":"Eric Migicovsky","slug":"eric-migicovsky","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/eric.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"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 smart","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/eric-migicovsky/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71183","name":"Event","slug":"event","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/event/"},{"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":"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":"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":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71090","name":"Eric Migicovsky","slug":"eric-migicovsky","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/eric.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"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 smart","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/eric-migicovsky/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71183","name":"Event","slug":"event","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/event/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/announcing-yc-build-sprint-and-20-equity-free-grants/","excerpt":"We’re excited to announce our first-ever YC Build Sprint. This is a 4-weekperiod to work intensively towards a defined goal alongside a community ofthousands of other founders. The sprint will kick off on August 24 and beadministered through our free Startup School platform. Also, we’ll be awarding20 grants of $10,000 to winners selected from among the sprint participants! Sign up for Startup School and register for the sprint [https://www.","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":"61fe29f1c7139e0001a71c04","uuid":"137bef50-c46e-42ab-9496-bd321c54e3fa","title":"Does co-founder matching work? It did for these three YC companies.","slug":"does-co-founder-matching-work","html":"<h3 id=\"%E2%80%9Cco-founder-matching-saved-my-life%E2%80%9D\"><strong>“Co-founder matching saved my life.”</strong></h3><p>In August of 2021, Christina Czap, co-founder and CEO of <strong><strong><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.helloseer.com//">Seer (YC W21), found herself badly in need of a technical co-founder. Seer, which raised $2.3M to help retail salespeople create shoppable Lookbooks, was receiving incredible customer interest and couldn’t keep up with the inbound demand.</p><p>At the suggestion of her group partners at YC, Christina made a profile on YC’s <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://www.ycombinator.com/cofounder-matching/">co-founder matching platform</a>. Three months and many calls later, Seer had a new CTO: Gal Vered, a former PM at Google.</p><p>Gal had been using co-founder matching since July. Although he was initially skeptical of the platform, he eventually met up with 46 potential co-founders, and found the perfect fit with Seer.</p><figure class=\"kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption\"><img src=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://blog.ycombinator.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/asdfasd.jpeg/" class=\"kg-image\" alt loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption>The co-founders of Seer (YC W21), Gal Vered and Christina Czap.</figcaption></figure><p>We launched the co-founder matching platform earlier this year to help founders find their co-founders. When you sign up, you tell us about yourself and what you’re looking for, and we show you profiles that most closely match your ideal co-founder. If you message a candidate and they accept, we match the two of you.</p><p>Co-founder matching has also seen success with brand-new companies. Three pairs of co-founders met through the platform earlier this year, worked together on trial projects, became fully committed co-founders, applied to YC, and were accepted into the Summer 2021 batch!</p><p><strong><strong><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.sequincard.com//">Sequin (YC S21) is one of these companies. Vrinda Gupta had left her job after launching credit cards like the Chase Sapphire Reserve at Visa to work on a product to help women build credit. She spent a year working as a solo founder, and, in that time, raised a pre-seed and built an MVP. She knew she needed a technical co-founder who was mission driven, had fintech expertise, and was in it for the long haul.</p><figure class=\"kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption\"><img src=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://blog.ycombinator.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Sequin.jpeg/" class=\"kg-image\" alt loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption>Sequin (YC S21) co-founders, Vrinda Gupta and Mark Thomas.</figcaption></figure><p>That person was Mark Thomas. He had ten years of engineering experience at Paypal, cared deeply about gender equity, and spent six years as CTO of family-oriented startups. They had an instant connection and arranged to meet in person soon after. Vrinda recalls, “We met the day after we matched, and the day after, and then the day after that.”</p><p>Together, they went through YC’s batch this summer and <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.forbes.com/sites/geristengel/2021/09/15/debit-card-startup-builds-credit-for-women/?sh=6283b60b3c67\%22>raised $5.7M</a>.</p><p><strong><strong><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.kiwibiosciences.com//">Kiwi Biosciences</a></strong></strong> (YC S21) has a similar story. Anjie Liu started the company to solve her own pains with irritable bowel syndrome. She had a founding scientist to tackle R&amp;D, but wanted a co-founder to help her build a consumer brand and commercialize the product.</p><figure class=\"kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption\"><img src=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://blog.ycombinator.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/kiwi.jpeg/" class=\"kg-image\" alt loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption>Anjie Liu and David Hachuel, co-founders of Kiwi Biosciences (YC S21).</figcaption></figure><p>When Anjie saw David Hachuel’s profile on YC co-founder matching, she knew that he was “exactly what [she] was looking for.” David had previously sold a startup in the same space, and was immediately interested in her idea.</p><p>They took a very structured approach to co-founder matching. Both founders answered all 50 questions posed in <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://proof-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/firstround/50 Questions for Co-Founders.pdf/">First Round’s co-founder questionnaire</a>. They found deep alignment on “all the important things” (conflict resolution, vision for culture, etc.). When their month-long trial ended and it came time to say go or no-go, the decision was easy.</p><p>Anjie and David worked remotely for four months and finally met in person after getting into YC. They went through YC and <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/14/kiwi-bio-aims-to-free-irritable-bowel-syndrome-sufferers-from-restrictive-diets//">raised $1.5M</a>.</p><p>We’re ecstatic about the companies who met through our co-founder matching and we’re excited to see the platform continue to grow and support more awesome founders in the future!</p><p>Looking for a co-founder? Check out the platform at <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://blog.ycombinator.com/does-co-founder-matching-work/www.ycombinator.com/cofounder-matching/">www.ycombinator.com/cofounder-matching.

","comment_id":"61a505fbcf1ec1000121a57c","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2021/12/BlogTwitter-Image-Template--11-.png","featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2021-11-29T08:55:23.000-08:00","updated_at":"2021-12-30T11:27:19.000-08:00","published_at":"2021-11-24T08:55:00.000-08:00","custom_excerpt":"Read about how the founders of Seer, Sequin, and Kiwi Biosciences used YC’s co-founder matching platform to complete their founding team.","codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71081","name":"Catheryn Li","slug":"catheryn","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/10/catheryn.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Catheryn (Cat) is a Product Engineer at YC focused on Startup School. Before that she was an engineer at Instagram and Facebook. 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It will be the first Startup School course to feature in-person meetups and talks in over a hundred cities around the world.</p>\n<p>The 7 week course will begin June 27, 2022. It’s free and open to everyone. You don’t need to have a startup or a startup idea yet; Startup School is the perfect place to find one. Register at <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://startupschool.org/">startupschool.org.

/n

The last time we ran a live Startup School course was three years ago, in the summer of 2019 before covid. In the years since, operating YC remotely through the pandemic taught us a ton about running great remote events and connecting a distributed community.</p>\n<p>We’re now applying everything we’ve learned to the next Startup School. It’s a reimagined experience designed for a global community of founders, combining the best of online and in-person. This is how it will work:</p>\n<ol>\n<li>\n<p>We’ll have speakers covering everything founders need to know to go from idea to startup. Most of these will be taught by current YC group partners. We’ll also have talks from some of YC’s most successful founders, including Amjad and Haya Masad from <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/replit/">Replit and Blake Scholl from <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/boom/">Boom who will give us a live walk-through of his supersonic jet hangar.</p>\n<p>For the first time, these talks will be hosted live on Zoom, so participants can ask questions and interact with the speakers. <br /></p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p>We’ve launched a new track for founders who don’t have an idea yet and are just exploring doing a startup. Our last course was designed for founders who already had an idea and were actively working on a startup. But this time, we’ve split the course into two tracks: an “active founders” track and an “aspiring founders” track. We expect most of the participants to be in the aspiring founders track. Startup School is the perfect fit for that stage. <br /></p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p>We’ve tightly integrated our <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://ycombinator.com/cofounder-matching/">co-founder matching site</a> into the course. YC runs the world’s largest co-founder matching site, with over 30,000 founders and 70,000 matches made. If you’re looking for a co-founder, it’s the best place to go.</p>\n<p>During the course, we’ll also host many meetups and speed-dating events for people looking to meet potential cofounders. <br /></p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p>For the first time, we’ll facilitate hundreds of in-person meetups and talks in dozens of cities around the world.</p>\n<p>Some of our most successful YC alumni will host large-scale, 100+ person meetups at their offices. Each meetup will include a talk by the founders on how they built the company, followed by a networking session where you can meet the company founders and each other.</p>\n<p>We’ll also be facilitating smaller self-organized meetups in cities where we don’t have an official YC alum talk.</p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n<p>Here are the confirmed talks at YC alumni offices in 30 cities; we’re still adding more. Please note that access to these meetups is subject to capacity limits and dependent on local covid conditions:</p>\n<!--kg-card-end: markdown--><p>Amsterdam - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/messagebird/">Messagebird
Atlanta - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety/">Flock Safety</a><br>Austin - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/gecko-robotics/">Gecko Robotics</a><br>Austin - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/jasper-ai-inc/">Jasper AI</a><br>Bangalore - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/razorpay/">Razorpay
Bogota - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/frubana-inc/">Frubana
Boston - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/centaur-labs/">Centaur Labs</a><br>Cairo - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/instabug/">Instabug
Cambridge (UK) - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/stem-sugar/">The Supplant Company</a><br>Chicago - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/tovala/">Tovala
Washington D.C. - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/numero/">Numero
Dubai - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/baraka/">Baraka
Jakarta - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/xendit/">Xendit
Lagos - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/paystack/">Paystack
London - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/humanloop/">Humanloop
London - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://monzo.com/us//">Monzo / <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/gocardless/">GoCardless
Los Angeles - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/upkeep/">UpKeep
Los Angeles - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/embrace/">Embrace
Los Angeles - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/inversion-space/">Inversion Space</a><br>Mexico City - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/beek/">Beek
Mexico City - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/nuvocargo/">Nuvocargo
Miami - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/wayup/">WayUp
Mumbai - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/zepto/">Zepto
New York City - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/c16-biosciences/">C16 Biosciences</a><br>Paris - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/algolia/">Algolia
Pittsburgh - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/gecko-robotics/">Gecko Robotics</a><br>San Francisco - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/embark-trucks/">Embark
São Paulo - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/chatpay/">Hubla
Singapore - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/spenmo/">Spenmo
Tel Aviv - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/guesty/">Guesty
Toronto - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/rose-rocket/">Rose Rocket</a><br><br>If you’re interested in joining these meetups, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://startupschool.org/">register for the course.\t</p><!--kg-card-begin: markdown--><iframe width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ngv14GwaMSg/" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen></iframe><!--kg-card-end: markdown-->","comment_id":"6282cc8054a948000183a58e","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/05/V02_Thumbnail.jpg","featured":true,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2022-05-16T15:13:20.000-07:00","updated_at":"2022-05-17T11:56:59.000-07:00","published_at":"2022-05-17T09:01:22.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":"Today, we’re opening up registration for Startup School 2022, a live, online course where YC Group Partners and successful YC founders teach you how to build a billion dollar company.","codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71097","name":"Jared Friedman","slug":"jared-friedman","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/Jared.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Jared is Managing Director, Software and Group Partner at YC. 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What do people want in a co-founder?

by Catheryn Li, Katherine Bernstein10/21/2021

YC launched a co-founder matching platform about 3 months ago. There are now 16,000 co-founder profiles on the platform. Potential co-founders have sent 130,000 matching invites through the platform, and, with a 25% acceptance rate, we’ve seen a total of 33,000 matches.

We now have enough data to identify some interesting trends among our co-founder profiles and matches.

Who are the founders on our platform?

  • 40% of profiles are from the U.S., with 60% representing another 145
    countries.
  • 42% identify as technical (i.e. “a programmer, scientist, or engineer
    who can build the product without outside assistance”).
  • 43% are working full-time (40+ hours/week) on their startup, 22% are
    part-time (20-40 hours/week), and the remaining spend <20
    hours/week on their startup.
  • Of the founders who are not currently working on a startup, 47% plan
    to start in the next 3 months, and another 21% plan to start in the
    next 6 months.
  • 13% identify as a woman.

What do founders care about?

We give founders the option to mark their preferences for a co-founder across several attributes, including:

  • Whether they are technical
  • Areas of skill (Product, Design, Engineering, Sales and Marketing,
    Operations)
  • Their level of time commitment over the next few weeks (40+
    hours/week, 20-40 hours/week, or less)
  • Their location
  • Whether they have shared interests (e.g. B2B/Enterprise, Biotech,
    etc.)

Founders also indicate how important each attribute is: whether it’s a must-have, whether they have a preference but are flexible, or whether they don’t care at all.

The two most important attributes: 79% of founders care that their co-founder can commit a certain number of hours over the next few weeks, and 74% of founders prefer to have shared interests with their co-founder. However, only 15% and 13% see these attributes as must-haves, respectively.

The least important attribute? 50% of founders don’t care where their co-founder is located, perhaps a sign of the (newly remote) times.

What industries are founders interested in?

Each founder can select interests from the following list: Agriculture/Agtech, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality (ARVR), B2B/Enterprise, Biomedical/Biotech, Blockchain, Consumer, E-Commerce, Education/Edtech, Energy, Entertainment, Financial/Fintech, Government, Hardware, Hard Tech, Healthcare, Marketplace, Non-Profit.

The top 6 most popular interests:

  • B2B/Enterprise (36% of founders indicate interest)
  • Consumer (34%)
  • AI (34%)
  • Marketplace (32%)
  • Fintech (29%)
  • E-Commerce (29%)

Most founders select several interests; the median number of interests selected is 3. Interestingly, the most popular interests among founders who pick only 1 interest look different:

  • B2B/Enterprise (17%)
  • Fintech (13%)
  • Edtech (12%)
  • Consumer (11%)
  • Healthcare (7%)
  • AI (7%)

What skills are founders interested in?

Founders on the co-founder matching platform can claim responsibility in five areas of skill: Product, Design, Engineering, Sales and Marketing, Operations.

  • 65% of founders do Product
  • 57% of founders do Operations
  • 52% of founders do Sales and Marketing
  • 37% of founders do Design
  • 31% of founders do Engineering

Here’s what founders want from their co-founder:

  • 62% of founders prefer a co-founder who does Engineering
  • 42% of founders prefer a co-founder who does Product
  • 39% of founders prefer a co-founder who does Design
  • 37% of founders prefer a co-founder who does Sales and Marketing
  • 28% of founders prefer a co-founder who does Operations

Engineers seem to be in high demand. Among founders who do not do Engineering, 80% prefer a co-founder who does Engineering. Even engineers themselves are looking for more engineers: 44% of Engineering founders prefer a co-founder who does Engineering.

Engineers are also looking for complementary skills though: 74% of Engineering founders prefer a co-founder who does Sales and Marketing, and 53% of Engineering founders prefer a co-founder who does Operations.

Who’s actually matching?

  • Founders on the platform have an average of 3.6 matches per person.
  • Engineers on the platform have an average of 4.8 matches per person.
  • Founders who aren’t married to an idea have an average of 5.1 matches
    per person.

The majority of matches (68%) are made up of a technical founder paired with a non-technical founder. A bigger majority of matches (72%) are made up of founders with at least one shared interest. An even greater portion of matches (73%) are made up of a founder with an idea they’re working on paired with a founder not glued to an idea.

55% of matches comprise founders located in the same country. 69% of matches are between founders in the same continent, and 61% of matches are composed of founders located within 3 time zones of each other. The rest, apparently, are from all over the world.

73% of matches contain at least one full-time founder, and 92% of matches contain at least one founder who is “active” (working on a startup idea now) rather than “aspiring” (plan to work on a startup later).

Finally, it seems that founders on the site are extremely active: 75% of all matches are accepted within 4.5 days of the initial invitation, and 50% of matches are accepted within 22 hours. Of the matches where founders indicate having met up either online or in person, 50% met within 6.2 days.

If you are looking for a co-founder, come check out the co-founder matching platform! Sign up at https://www.ycombinator.com/cofounder-matching.

Authors

  • Catheryn Li

    Catheryn (Cat) is a Product Engineer at YC focused on Startup School. Before that she was an engineer at Instagram and Facebook. Cat has a B.S. in Computer Science and Math from MIT.

  • Katherine Bernstein

    Katherine is a Product Engineer at Y Combinator, working on the Startup School team. Prior to YC, she was a co-founder and software engineer at OpenLattice.