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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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.
We give founders the option to mark their preferences for a co-founder across several attributes, including:
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.
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:
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:
Founders on the co-founder matching platform can claim responsibility in five areas of skill: Product, Design, Engineering, Sales and Marketing, Operations.
Here’s what founders want from their co-founder:
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.
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.
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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 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.