Sébastien Boyer

Most YC founders don’t have traction. They have a friends-and-family pipeline. The pattern is brutal: • 10–15 warm intros from your network • A handful of pilots (sometimes free) • Deck updated: “early traction achieved” That’s not traction. That’s momentum theatre. The problem? YC optimises you for fundraising, not for selling. What you don’t get in the accelerator pack: • A systematic outbound motion • Qualification filters sharper than “anyone with budget” • Pipeline math (coverage, velocity, CAC sanity checks) • Cadence for running a weekly GTM review So the day after Demo Day, the clock starts. Your warm intros dry up. Investors ask about repeatability. And you’re staring at an empty CRM. Fundraising extends runway. Systems extend survival. YC24/25 founders - when the warm intros end, what’s your GTM scaffolding?

9

After years of seeing exceptional deep tech founders struggle to navigate the gap between breakthrough science and market reality, we built Berkeley Gateway Accelerator to change that. Proud to work alongside this incredible team as we launch our first cohort. The future of deep tech depends on better bridges between research and commercialization.

80

15 Comments

Just found 5 YC startups with some of the most unique, “no one else would’ve built this” ideas I’ve seen 👇🏼 🚀 These are the kinds of concepts that make you stop and think “wait… that’s actually genius.” 1. Digipals (YC F25) Reinventing social media around real-life coordination instead of infinite scrolling. 2. Hypercubic (YC F25) Using AI to modernize COBOL and mainframes, the invisible backbone of banks, airlines, and governments. 3. Dome (YC F25) One API that connects every prediction market (Polymarket, Kalshi, etc.) into a unified trading layer. 4. Clad Labs (YC F25) A Gen-Z-native coding IDE where the coding loop blends with gaming, scrolling, and ads. 5. Nucleo (YC F25) Automated CT scan analysis for oncologists, already trusted by top hospitals. 👉 YC’s most innovative companies are often the ones that end up defining new categories. - - - - - - - 💬 Which one of these would you invest in purely because the idea is so wild?

33

1 Comment

📣 I’m thrilled to share that Stackpack has raised $6.3M in seed funding to build the vendor platform for this new era. Our round was led by Freestyle Capital, with participation from Elefund, Upside Partnership, Nomad Ventures, Marin Sonoma Impact Ventures, Pythia Ventures, Layout Ventures — and senior operators who helped scale Intuit, Workday, Affirm, Snapdocs and xAI and all felt this pain firsthand. We started Stackpack in August 2023 with a simple but urgent belief: vendors are becoming just as important to a company’s success as its employees — but most teams still don’t have a real way to manage them. With AI tools popping up everywhere and budgets shifting to contractors and third-party platforms, vendor sprawl is getting out of control. Sensitive data is leaving the org, compliance risks are piling up, and surprise renewals are blowing up budgets. Finance and IT teams need better visibility, smarter guardrails, and way more control. So what are we building? Stackpack is the first intelligent Vendor Stack Management platform — a system of record that uses AI not just to surface cost and risk, but to act on behalf of the customer. Think: one place to track vendors, manage renewals, flag redundancies, and get instant answers like “How much did we spend on AI tools last quarter?” Just a few months in, we’re already managing: → 10,500+ vendors → $510M in spend → For 50+ fast-growing teams like Every Man Jack, Rho, ZeroEyes, Stride Health, and BizzyCar This raise helps us: ✅ Expand our core platform ✅ Launch new products like Requests & Approvals and an AI Vendor Intelligence Assistant ✅ Grow our world-class team 💫 I’m incredibly grateful to our founding team who got us to this milestone — Ken Brownfield, Richard Rugless, David Stokes, Kelli Wisuri — and to our employees, investors, and early customers for betting on this vision. We’re just getting started! Still wrangling vendors in a spreadsheet? Whether you’re a CFO, IT leader, or just someone tired of vendor chaos—DM me, I’d love to talk! Forever thanks to: David Samuel, Jenny Lefcourt, Maria Palma, Aaron Szekel, Ross Glasser, Nathan Rodland, Serik Kaldykulov, Kent Goldman, Christopher Nakutis Taylor, James Mumma, Zachary Kushel, Elizabeth Murphy, Mike Liberatore, James Barrese, Rob Pfeifer, Elizabeth A., Joseph Floyd, Zach Noorani, Kelli Lampkin, Artin DerSookias, Allison Canton, Aaron K.

535

132 Comments

As a pre-seed VC, it is so necessary to wire and then get out of the way… But for the times when you need to be an on-call "fractional founder", and help portfolio founders with their 0 → 1 pains (PMF, recruiting, fundraising) — that is the best part of the job.

79

7 Comments

YC 🤝 #AmTech   Y Combinator just published their most recent request for startups, and like last cohort, #AmTech is a dominant theme. Founders are flocking to build companies that matter for America: let's break down 5 categories that YC is calling for and how they intersect with #AmTech. –𝗔𝗜 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗦𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰 𝗔𝗱𝘃𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁. Government is the premier driver of science in America, especially in fundamental like chemistry, biology, material science, and energy. The might of public-funded academia, the national laboratories, research orgs like the National Institutes of Health, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the National Science Foundation (NSF), bolstered by AI can usher in a flood of powerful discoveries.    -𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗘𝗱𝘂𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. The public education prize is massive: 50 million K-12 students, with another 13.5 million in public colleges. Education is changing, AI has made that much clear: to build category-defining AI education companies and win the whole market, founders are going to have to navigate selling to government customers. (Starbridge can supercharge their efforts here).    -𝗛𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗔𝗜. 67 million Americans are on Medicare and 72 million more are on Medicaid. Government as both a payor and a regulator has never been more influential on the future of healthcare. New innovations around administration (shoutout to Commonweal Ventures portfolio company Proximity Health), care navigation, care delivery, and personalization will be game-changers.    -𝗦𝗼𝗳𝘁𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗧𝗼𝗼𝗹𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗠𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗥𝗼𝗯𝗼𝘁𝘀. Many of the best immediate use cases for robots are in defense, construction, mining, and agriculture: four sectors where government is deeply involved. Leading robotics companies have more and more opportunities to partner with government partners that can validate their technology, finance their scaling, and procure en masse. -𝗩𝗼𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗔𝗜. Government answers an enormous amount of calls. We're seeing lots of companies tackling 911/non-emergency public safety calls. What about the long tail of other agencies picking up the phone? Voice AI is a new vector for governments to engage their constituents: expect both policy and political tailwinds for more transparent and efficient public services delivery.    Are you building in these spaces? We're investing. Get in touch. #VentureCapital #VC #YC

30

5 Comments

From 17 pivots → 2,000 user interviews during YC → Raising our $15M Series A. I'm still processing it. 11 straight days of back-to-back investor calls. And yet...there was a moment we almost didn't raise at all because we were profitable and cash-flow positive. So why did we decide this was the right time? ⸻ It started back in Y Combinator Summer 2023. Our group partners—Tom Blomfield, Gustaf Alströmer 🇺🇦, Jared Friedman, and Wayne Crosby—took a chance on us despite us having 17 different ideas and pivoting just 2 weeks before our interview! 3 minutes into the 9 minute interview, Tom stopped us: "Do you have any other ideas?" I was flustered. I threw out a half-baked idea. He just nodded: “ok.” 6 hours later, Gustaf called: "You're in." That moment changed everything. Fast forward ⏩ to today, we: - Created a new category, redefining sales coaching & enablement for large enterprises with AI - Went from 0 → 7-figures in revenue in 11 months, purely founder-led sales - 4x'd revenue in 2025 alone (and we're not even done yet) - 3x'd our team, scaling from 6 to 18 people in 8 months - Power several Fortune 20 & Fortune 500 clients - Closed multiple six-figure expansions - Surpassed hundreds of thousands of AI roleplays - Been used by reps from over 8,000 different companies ⸻ So why are $200B+ enterprise companies knocking on the door of a small San Francisco AI startup to solve their age-old problems? It's the same reason why Atul and I built Hyperbound for ourselves in the early days—because *sales is hard*. Why? Because communication is hard. And teaching it? Even harder. At most enterprise companies, the top 20% of sellers drive 80% of revenue. That means the gap between top-performing and average sales reps is tremendous. 👉🏽 Say you're a $1B revenue business, $800M comes from 20% of your reps. 👉🏽 Now imagine you can upskill even 5% more into elite sellers. That's an extra $50M+ in revenue—with zero new headcount. It's not that enterprises didn't know this before. The math is simple. The problem was just impossible to solve. ⸻ There's a lot of talk about AI replacing sellers. Here's the truth: Humans have been selling since the beginning of time. We're persuasive by nature. We convince, we negotiate, we trade. And the reason why it works is because it's all about 1) Empathy — seeing the world through someone else's eyes 2) Emotion — tapping into what they care about 3) Trust — buyers don't just buy solutions, they buy confidence That's why elite reps don't feel like they're selling. They're listening, connecting, & solving. The future of sales isn't about adding headcount or replacing people with AI. It's about scaling human excellence. That's the bet we're making at Hyperbound. Thank you Arnav Sahu and Peak XV Partners for leading this round, as well as Y Combinator, Snowflake Ventures, Fellows Fund, Roble Ventures, and all our other customers, advisors, and investors who believe in our mission 🚀

587

309 Comments

AI-native agencies are coming. YC says they’ll look like software companies — with software margins They’re right. AI removes manual work. Speeds up execution. Scales outcomes. But here’s what most people miss: When execution becomes abundant, creativity becomes scarce. And scarce = valuable. As highlighted in Why Creativity Will Matter Even More in an AI Age by Sir John Hegarty AI is a new canvas. It’s plumbing and poetry. At Multiply, we see this clearly: AI can generate. It can optimize. It can automate. But it cannot decide: → What’s the insight? → What’s the tension? → What’s the story worth telling? In a world where everyone has the same tools, the only unfair advantage is creative clarity. AI multiplies. Creativity decides what’s worth multiplying. That’s the future.

4

YC F25: what actually changed — and why it matters outside Silicon Valley I recently reviewed pitches from the YC F25 batch (the early demo day for YC founders, before the main Demo Day). I’ve followed YC batches for years, and F25 feels different — not louder, but more honest. 1. YC is still about technology — but not about coding anymore A technical background still matters. But today it matters as a way of thinking, not the ability to write code. F25 shows: fewer pure “hardcore coders” more founders who understand systems simpler products less heavy enterprise complexity People will code less. They’ll need to think better. 2. Startups got simpler — and that’s a feature Earlier batches were full of logistics, fintech plumbing, and heavy B2B. F25 has less of that. Not because ideas ran out — but because the market is exiting the venture winter. Simple systems reach revenue faster. Complex ones burn cash. 3. B2C is back — and it’s brutal There are more B2C products, and almost all of them rely on: strong distribution virality fast iteration In 2025, B2C is 99% distribution. If you can’t capture attention, you don’t exist. 4. AI lowered the barrier — and raised the bar AI tools made startups accessible beyond Valley engineers. The next wave includes: HVAC specialists, logistics operators, construction managers, healthcare admins — people who know their market better than most coders. But lower barriers don’t mean easy wins. They mean harsher competition. 5. Efficiency is back We’re in a slowdown. Cheap money is gone. Large teams without revenue are a liability. 10 people × $4k/month = $40k burn. That’s not growth — that’s a hole. YC F25 reflects this: less hype, more discipline, real economics. Final takeaway YC didn’t lose relevance. It became more honest. F25 is about focus, efficiency, and startups as a craft — not a fantasy. That’s why YC still matters.

6

2 Comments

YC just published their Spring 2026 Requests for Startups. What stood out isn’t any single category; it it’s the pattern. • AI as infrastructure, not features • Small teams building ops-heavy businesses first • Verticalized marketplaces that generate proprietary data • Software born from real-world service execution • Automation that replaces coordination, not people This matters for us. Even though we’re now a Canadian corporation and no longer YC-eligible, the RFS is a clear external signal that the category we’ve been building in quietly for 18 months is now firmly in focus. Affordable ServiceTech didn’t start as “AI.” It started as a demand-side pain: affordability, quality, accountability. The infrastructure came next. The data followed. The artificial intelligence layer became inevitable. YC’s RFS doesn’t change our roadmap; it validates the timing. That’s why we’re opening our seed round in March. Not because we fit a ‘VC ready’ checklist, but because the market is finally speaking the same language our product already does. Learn more here https://lnkd.in/gP3b_DPM

1

YC's winter 2025 batch is growing 10% weekly - faster than any cohort in their 20-year history. Here's why: → 95% of code is written by AI models → Teams of 2-3 founders build what used to require 50+ engineers → Capital goes 3x further without massive technical teams The cost of intelligence is dropping fortyfold every year, and OpenAI just accelerated the curve. What once required a research team and 6 months now happens in minutes with a single well-structured prompt. The bottleneck has shifted from "can you build it?" to "do people want it?" When thinking becomes cheap, everything changes: - Expertise becomes commoditized - Curiosity becomes scarce - Taste becomes leverage Ten years ago, we paid to store information. Today, we're about to stop paying to think. Every founder will soon have near-infinite cognitive horsepower on demand. The challenge will be directing it.

7

2 Comments

Just had a conversation with a group of venture investors. They have an in-house team testing LLMs — not with benchmarks, but with prompts designed to replicate 100 real products they backed since 2020. Not futuristic “super agents”, but innovative tools with a real-world complexity score of 5 to 8 out of 10. Today’s top models can replicate just 2% of those products without code. With GPT-5, they’re expecting 22–25%. If that happens, they believe the venture landscape — as we know it — won’t survive. I’m sharing my SMB-focused prompt systems with them. Right now, they automate ~30% of the daily operational workload for small businesses — but this is still in the "paper experiment" phase. I’m observing 20 boutiques, restaurants, and salons across 4 countries, tracking how they apply AI to real workflows. This isn’t the internet, where feedback loops take a week. Here, it takes months. But the early signs are promising. We’re nervously excited to test it all on GPT-5.

66

2 Comments

After a bit of press over the last few weeks, we are pleased to make it official… Operata has closed our Series A. Led by Tidal Ventures, with new investors Glitch Capital and ongoing support from Ghost VC, Black Nova Venture Capital, and Flying Fox Ventures The investment reflects a clear market signal: As AI rapidly reshapes the contact center, CX observability has become essential infrastructure to accelerate enterprise transformation and fuel IT & Ops performance. Thanks to all our investors Georgie Turner Grant M. Wendell Keuneman Ryan Fitzpatrick Leigh Jasper Jo Lanyon Paul Perrett Matthew Browne Darcy Naunton Kylie Frazer Rachael Neumann For recent press, see link in comments.

117

28 Comments

This is a trend I keep reiterating... YC startups are becoming THE most attractive acquisition targets in tech. Deepgram just acquired OfOne, a YC Winter 2023 AI startup less than 2 years after demo day. When you invest in an ecosystem that pre-filters for top 1% talent, you're investing in the founders larger companies want to buy. For big companies it's faster to buy the talent than recruit it, and the talent war is compressing the best upstream. Deepgram likely did a stock deal. Not a massive cash exit. Maybe even smaller than Anthropic acquiring Bun (rumored $100-300M, unverified). But OfOne investors get Deepgram equity with upside if the company keeps growing... Not a generational outcome but liquidity in 2 years beats illiquidity in 10. For smaller funds, YC creates a liquidity pipeline that didn't exist before. Acquisitions are happening faster and earlier. The talent wars guarantee demand. Sometimes this is a generational outcome... Scale AI went from YC to ~$15B. But between demo day and Scale, there are dozens of $50-200M acquisitions every year that nobody talks about. The mega-funds need home runs ofc, but small funds can compound a few singles and doubles if they come fast enough. And this pace is accelerating. AI companies mature in months, larger companies know this. They're acquiring earlier to avoid getting priced out later and YC produces acquisition targets at scale.

17

4 Comments

Our API found every YC S25 founder's educational background to discover the people controlling Silicon Valley's future come from these 5 universities. The Breakdown:  → Stanford: 19 founders - undisputed with nearly 1 in 10 YC founders → Cornell: 11 founders - crushing Harvard and MIT combined → University of Michigan: 9 founders - proving you don't need $300K tuition Fun fact: More Stanford grad school founders (11) than undergrads (8). Stanford also isn't just winning. They've created a pipeline to YC through their alumni network of VCs, their 30-minute proximity to YC, and their culture where dropping out is celebrated. Cornell engineers are quietly taking over with 11 founders versus Harvard's 3, backed by their top-tier CS program. UC Berkeley (10) and Michigan (9) are proving you don't need private education to deliver world-class engineering. But if you're planning YC: Technical skills beat school prestige, execution trumps education every time, and proximity to Silicon Valley helps. Elite education might open doors, but building something people want is what gets you through them. This university analysis is scratching the surface of what you can uncover with our API. Use Sixtyfour to find you the data you need.

291

50 Comments

The French YC Mafia has raised more than $221M in total funding. These YC founders are building from Paris and across France while keeping a very Bay Area style culture. Fast feedback loops, small teams, quick shipping cycles and a strong focus on product. The mix of YC speed and French craftsmanship shows up in the rounds they are closing. Using Crustdata’s People Search API and Funding API, we found the most funded YC companies with founders currently based in France: Photoroom - $75.3M - Matt Rouif, Eliot Andres Riot - $45M - Ben N. Finary - $40.9M - Mounir Laggoune, Julien Blancher Formance - $30.8M - Clément Salaün malibou - $9.2M - Maxence Drummond, Alexandre Pernin Bitstack - $9.1M - Alexandre Roubaud, Kabir Sethi Argil (YC S24) - $6.8M - Laodis Menard, Brivael Le Pogam Parallel - $4M - Paul Lafforgue, Thomas Sohet Did we miss anyone who should be in the French YC Mafia?

832

36 Comments

What’s the REAL advantage of getting into YC? Not the funding. Not the classes. It’s this 👇 “When you get into YC, you go from reaching out to investors… to investors reaching out to you. We raised $2M in a week.” In this clip, Jesse Evans (Co-founder & CEO, Maverick | YC-Backed) breaks down why YC is still the strongest launchpad for early-stage founders — even with bigger batches and less personalization. 🎧 Watch the full BizUp episode for the entire YC journey, fundraising strategy, and how Maverick is innovating in one of the world’s oldest industries. 👉 Full episode now live on YouTube & Spotify

5

This is good advice for any startup founder. Though YC does not explicitly say it, what's implied as you build your company are two things: · Build Product, Sell Product and · Control Your Destiny

53

2 Comments