x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

PODCAST

Y Combinator Startup Podcast

We help founders make something people want. The Y Combinator Podcast is where builders talk about building. From the earliest days of an idea to scaling a company that changes the world, YC partners and founders share real stories, lessons, and tactics from the frontlines.

technology

All Episodes

00:49:40

Elon Musk: Digital Superintelligence, Multiplanetary...

Y Combinator Startup Podcast ·

2025/06/21

A fireside with Elon Musk at AI Startup School in San Francisco.Before rockets and robots, Elon Musk was drilling holes through his office floor to borrow internet. In this candid talk, he walks through the early days of Zip2, the Falcon 1 launches that nearly ended SpaceX, and the “miracle” of Tesla surviving 2008. He shares the thinking that guided him—building from first principles, doing useful things, and the belief that we’re in the middle of an intelligence big bang.

en-us

00:39:31

Andrej Karpathy: Software Is Changing (Again)

Y Combinator Startup Podcast ·

2025/06/19

Andrej Karpathy's keynote at AI Startup School in San Francisco.Drawing on his work at Stanford, OpenAI, and Tesla, Andrej sees a shift underway. Software is changing, again. We’ve entered the era of “Software 3.0,” where natural language becomes the new programming interface and models do the rest.He explores what this shift means for developers, users, and the design of software itself— that we're not just using new tools, but building a new kind of computer.Slides provided by Andrej:

en-us

00:37:28

Cursor CEO: Going Beyond Code, Superintelligent AI...

Y Combinator Startup Podcast ·

2025/06/11

Michael Truell, co-founder and CEO of Anysphere, the company behind Cursor, joins Garry to talk about building one of the fastest-growing startups of all time—and why he's betting on a future beyond code. He walks through the early insights that led his team to leave a promising AI-powered CAD project and instead chase a bigger dream: reinventing how software is written. From years of false starts and rewrites to Cursor's breakthrough moment, Michael explains what it takes to build a tool

en-us

00:08:07

Fusion Energy Is Tech's Next Big Unlock

Y Combinator Startup Podcast ·

2025/06/06

Fusion may still sound like science fiction— but it might not be for much longer. With AI pushing demand for clean power to new highs, a breakthrough may finally be close.For Decoded, YC General Partner Gustaf Alstromer traces the history of fusion, the physics behind it, and the engineering challenges that stalled it for nearly a century. He also looks at how Helion is approaching the problem differently, as they develop a new fusion system expected to deliver power to Microsoft by 2028.

en-us

00:30:07

AI Apps Are Broken — Here's How To Fix Them

Y Combinator Startup Podcast ·

2025/05/23

In this episode of The Breakdown, Tom and Dave are joined by fellow YC General Partner Pete Koomen to lay out a new vision for how AI should actually work: not as a chatbot bolted onto legacy software, but as a customizable tool that helps people offload the work they don't want to do. From editable system prompts to agents that act more like collaborators, they dig into what it means to build AI-native software—and why the future belongs to products that let users teach machines how to

en-us

00:19:11

How AI Coding Agents Will Change Your Job

Y Combinator Startup Podcast ·

2025/05/09

Coding agents are no longer a distant idea—they're already starting to reshape how we work.YC's Tom Blomfield and David Lieb discuss how AI coding tools are transforming software development, why small, high-agency teams will be able to do what once took armies of engineers, and why there's never been a better time to start something new. They explore the bigger picture too: a future where there's abundance, knowledge work becomes more accessible, and founders have more leverage than

en-us

00:16:39

How To Get The Most Out Of Vibe Coding | Startup School

Y Combinator Startup Podcast ·

2025/04/25

AI can't yet one-shot an entire product—but with the rise of vibe coding, it's getting close. YC's Tom Blomfield has spent the last month building side projects with tools like Claude Code, Windsurf, and Aqua, seeing just how far you can push modern LLMs. From writing full-stack apps to debugging with a single paste of an error message, AI is becoming a legit collaborator in the dev process. This is a playbook for anyone who wants to get the most out of vibe coding and build faster.

en-us

00:38:23

How Zepto Became India’s Fastest Growing Startup

Y Combinator Startup Podcast ·

2025/04/18

Imagine ordering groceries and having them show up at your doorstep in just 10 minutes. That’s the promise of Zepto, the fastest-growing e-commerce company in India. In this episode of How To Build The Future, Garry sits down with Aadit Palicha, the co-founder and CEO of Zepto, to discuss how they got started in a Whatsapp group, what it’s like going up against incumbents like Amazon and Zomato and how the future of e-commerce is changing in the age of intelligence.

en-us

00:34:12

Why America Stopped Innovating - And How We Can Start...

Y Combinator Startup Podcast ·

2025/04/04

Not long ago, America led the world in building and innovation. But over the past 50 years, bureaucracy and red tape have made it nearly impossible to get big things done.Still, there’s a growing movement to turn that around — to build faster, smarter, and better than ever before.In this episode of The Main Function, Garry sits down with Atlantic staff writer and Plain English podcast host Derek Thompson to discuss his new book Abundance (co-authored with Ezra Klein). They discuss how we got here,

en-us

00:20:43

Why Every Founder Should Care About Design

Y Combinator Startup Podcast ·

2025/03/28

In this special episode of Design Review, Aaron sits down with Raphael Schaad, the Head of Calendar at Notion to discuss his leap from designer to founder, why illustration is an important first step when building a new product, and what ultimately makes designers uniquely qualified to start a company today.

en-us

00:31:32

How to Build the Future: Tony Xu

Y Combinator Startup Podcast ·

2025/03/26

12 years after starting DoorDash, co-founder & CEO Tony Xu and his employees still do deliveries every year, staying true to their core value: customer obsession.Today, DoorDash is the largest food delivery platform in the US.In this episode of How to Build the Future, Tony explains how their unwavering long-term vision won — helping create a new market while surviving near death and a global pandemic along the way.

en-us

00:24:58

Customer Obsession Made Gusto A $9.6 Billion Company

Y Combinator Startup Podcast ·

2025/03/18

Gusto (https://gusto.com) made payroll and HR painless for small businesses, growing into a $9.6B company along the way. Co-founder & CEO Josh Reeves joined YC's Harj Taggar to share how they built a payroll company from scratch and their customer-first approach to product design and culture.

en-us

00:37:41

The Future Of Design With Figma's Dylan Field

Y Combinator Startup Podcast ·

2025/03/13

Design isn’t just about making things work—it’s about how they work, says Dylan Field, the co-founder & CEO of Figma.As AI transforms tech, he believes a designer's judgment, taste, and agency will matter more than ever.Dylan sat down with YC's Garry Tan to discuss the evolving world of design in the age of AI, the challenging early days at Figma, and how his team forever changed the way designers and engineers collaborate.

en-us

00:34:38

How To Build The Future: Aravind Srinivas

Y Combinator Startup Podcast ·

2025/02/21

YC General Partner David Lieb sits down with Aravind Srinivas, the co-founder and CEO of Perplexity, to discuss his origins in Silicon Valley, what it's like to compete with Google, and what the future of search could look like.Apply to Y Combinator: https://ycombinator.com/apply

en-us

00:13:45

Building A Supersonic Plane Company From The Ground Up

Y Combinator Startup Podcast ·

2025/02/14

Imagine flying from NY to London in just a few hours. That’s the future that Blake Scholl and his team at Boom Supersonic are working towards. Blake started as a software engineer and pivoted mid-career to aviation. Now, he’s at the forefront of trying to bring back supersonic travel for all of us. In this episode of Hard Tech, YC’s Jared Friedman visited Blake in the Mojave desert to find out how someone who didn’t have a background in aerospace engineering was able to build the first-ever

en-us

00:29:06

The Right (And Wrong) Way To Spend Money At Your Startup

Y Combinator Startup Podcast ·

2025/02/12

Many startups fail because they run out of money. So how should you think about how to spend the money you raise?In this episode of Office Hours, YC General Partners Brad Flora, Pete Koomen, Nicolas Dessaigne, and Gustaf Alströmer discuss how to spend responsibly at each stage of a startup— including advice on when to hire, whether to invest in marketing and what spending mistakes to avoid.Apply to Y Combinator: https://ycombinator.com/apply

en-us

00:30:44

How To Build The AGI Future: Bob McGrew

Y Combinator Startup Podcast ·

2025/01/31

According to OpenAI's former Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew, reasoning and test-time compute will unlock more reliable and capable AI agents— and a path to scale to AGI.In this episode of How to Build the Future, YC's @garrytan sits down with Bob to discuss the lessons learned from his time at OpenAI, scaling laws, his advice for startups, and what all of this means for the jobs of the future.

en-us

00:14:02

How To Leverage AI In Your Startup

Y Combinator Startup Podcast ·

2025/01/15

AI continues to improve at an exponential pace. So what can you do as a founder to take advantage of it? In this episode of Office Hours, YC Partners discuss what you should consider if you’re thinking about pivoting to or incorporating AI as part of your startup.

en-us

00:43:28

How To Build The Future: Parker Conrad

Y Combinator Startup Podcast ·

2025/01/10

In this episode of How to Build the Future, Garry sits down with Parker Conrad, Co-founder & CEO of Rippling, the all-in-one HR, Finance, and IT software company that’s valued at $13.5 billion. Parker is the co-founder of two unicorns and has one of the more dramatic startup journeys in recent years. In this interview, he shares his origin story, the lessons learned from his first two companies, how AI is changing the game, and why he thinks the future will be defined by "compound" software

en-us

00:24:31

Building A $2 Billion SaaS Company: Lessons From A...

Y Combinator Startup Podcast ·

2025/01/08

Two-time founder Rujul Zaparde knows a thing or two about resilience and learning from failure. After dropping out of college to build FlightCar, he worked as a PM at Airbnb, and later as a visiting partner at YC. In 2020, he co-founded Zip, a procurement software company that has since raised $370 million and reached a $2.2 billion valuation. In this conversation with YC's Dalton Caldwell, Rujul demystifies the world of enterprise sales, shares his hard-earned lessons about scaling a business

en-us

307 results

Similar Podcasts

Lead With AI

Tamara Nall

Linux in the Ham Shack

Black Sparrow Media

Data Engineering Podcast

Tobias Macey

Eye On A.I.

Craig S. Smith

Reflections

Livewire Labs