y-combinator
(1,633)
David Kang and the art of taking boring seriously
Before he became Keeper’s CEO, David Kang was an options trader with an appetite for difficult details. His next bet was that ordinary people deserved help with the paperwork everyone would rather postpone.
Iba Masood and the work between the work
Before Tara AI and Optimal AI, Iba Masood rented books to her schoolmates in Dubai. Her companies have grown around a recurring question: what keeps capable people from getting things done?
Jon Lerner’s twelve-year detour
A spreadsheet that took two minutes to load became CoinTracker. For co-founder Jon Lerner, it was also a long detour toward a financial assistant he first pitched in 2014.
Geoff Schmidt and the Art of Making Room
A Cambridge basement, a discarded travel app, and a shared graph: the Apollo co-founder has spent years clearing space for other people to build.
Mike McNeil would like you to inspect the machinery
The creator of Sails.js now runs Fleet Device Management. Across both, Mike McNeil keeps returning to a practical question: how much easier does work become when people can see how things work?
Brooke Hopkins and the trouble with a perfect demo
At Waymo, Brooke Hopkins built systems for testing self-driving cars. At Coval, she is applying the lesson to AI conversations, with a founder’s eye for everything from failed calls to the flowers on the table.
Lander Degrève Would Like You to Close the Laptop
The Spott co-founder left consulting to build recruiting software with two university friends. His test of progress is becoming rather personal: can the recruiter go home earlier?
Ilya Sukhar and the value of doing less
He built Parse to spare developers the work they kept repeating. From mobile infrastructure to investing at Matrix, Ilya Sukhar has kept returning to the same question: what can we take off the builder’s plate?
Tope Alabi and the money in the wrong country
A string of startup experiments led Tope Alabi back to the same inconvenience: paying Nigerian expenses with American money. Afriex grew out of the interruption.
Tom Reno’s education in things that don’t talk
A customer used ChatGPT to decipher Agave’s error messages. For co-founder and CEO Tom Reno, it was a useful reminder: connecting software is only part of getting people to understand it.
Archit Gupta and the trouble with a simple form
A conversation with his accountant father sent a Silicon Valley engineer into India’s tax maze. Fifteen years after founding ClearTax, Archit Gupta is still finding work inside the word “simple”.
Yaroslav Azhnyuk and the long journey of a small camera
Petcube began with a barking Chihuahua and a remote-controlled laser. Its founding CEO carried the lessons of consumer hardware back to Kyiv, where he now builds companies for a very different kind of urgency.
Matt Schiller and the Business Hidden in a Graduation Photo
A photograph his mother loved helped send Matt Schiller toward a different business. With Snappr, the Australian founder has spent a decade working out what happens between wanting a picture and actually getting one.
Tristan Kalos and the lesson in the empty database
A client’s missing data gave the future Escape co-founder a problem he could not forget. He has spent the years since bringing developers and security teams into the same conversation.
Danny Sheridan and the company on the apartment wall
Before Fern joined Postman, Danny Sheridan tracked its customers on sticky notes. His path from a bedroom e-commerce business to API tooling follows a persistent interest: making useful work easier to repeat.
Jorge Zamora and the Value of a Small Shortcut
Before GoLinks, Jorge Zamora drew plans for physical infrastructure and taught himself to build a social network. His next idea came from noticing how much useful software stayed trapped inside big companies.
Varun Vummadi and the year the idea kept changing
He turned down a Stanford PhD offer to build with his college friend. Finding something worth building took longer: a tutor, a model business, and a year of uncomfortable revisions before Giga found its way into customer support.
Ari Malik’s Theory of Being There
At Tesla, Ari Malik saw how much work begins after a loan is made. Building Salient with a school friend, he learned that the shortest route to better software ran through a lender’s office.
Dmitry Dumik and the art of changing the plan
Before Chatfuel, Dmitry Dumik sold school reports, mowed American lawns and built an app that failed to travel. His career keeps returning to the same question: what happens when you try something before you feel ready?
Josh Santos and the Education of a Carbon Founder
He helped scale electric vehicles, then co-founded Noya to pull carbon from the air. After the company wound down, Josh Santos took its hard-earned lessons to London, where he now helps scientists become founders.
Suryanarayanan Paneerselvam and the education that starts after the degree
He left an engineering job in America to help engineers in India put their knowledge to work. Skill-Lync grew from after-hours lessons into a funded business, bringing a larger test of the promise that started it.
Brian Vallelunga and the problem that survived the startup
A failed crypto marketplace left Brian Vallelunga with a useful nuisance: nobody knew where the software’s secrets were. He built Doppler around it, bought the first prospects burritos, and eventually handed over the CEO’s chair.
Michael Carvin and the question a mortgage calculator couldn’t answer
He understood financial models. Buying a home still left him puzzled. Michael Carvin turned that mismatch into SmartAsset, then discovered that some of the most valuable answers begin with a conversation.
Nicolas Dessaigne and the art of letting go
He helped turn an offline search engine into Algolia, then hired someone else to run it. At Y Combinator, Nicolas Dessaigne is putting a career of changing course to work for other founders.
Jaspar Carmichael-Jack and the three words he had to outgrow
Artisan’s co-founder turned “Stop hiring humans” into a sales pitch heard far beyond Silicon Valley. His next act asks a harder question: what should the humans do instead?
Kirti Shenoy and the problem hiding inside payday
A staffing startup sent Kirti Shenoy looking for better payroll software. The search became Zeal - and a career spent untangling what happens between a shift worked and a paycheck received.
Victor Cardenas and the Trouble with a Perfect Fit
Slash found its first customers among sneaker resellers. When their market buckled, Victor Cardenas had to decide how much of his company to keep - and how much to invent again.
Puneet Mehta and the case for a quieter machine
Before Netomi, Puneet Mehta built trading systems and an app for navigating New York. His next wager is that useful AI should leave customers with fewer reasons to ask for help.
William Fairbairn and the work between the software
After building and selling a software business, working at McKinsey and leading Agicap in the UK, William Fairbairn found his next problem in the gaps between finance systems. At Zalos, he and Hung Hoang are building agents to do the work that still falls to people.
Ivan Tsybaev and the trouble with an empty parking space
Trucker Path’s founding CEO helped drivers find somewhere to stop. After a complicated sale and an education startup, he is back in freight, working on the conversations that keep it moving.