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.
Latest episodes
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41 min
How to Build the Future: Demis Hassabis
Demis Hassabis has had one of the most extraordinary careers in tech. He started as a chess prodigy and video game designer at 17 before getting a PhD in neuroscience and going on…
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39 min
The $9B Startup That Wants to Create a Billion New Developers
Replit is the leading no-code app builder for consumers and enterprise, letting anyone with an idea build real, deployed software using natural language. The company just raised a…
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10 min
The Playbook For Building An AI Native Company
AI isn't just making teams more productive. It's changing how companies should be built.In this episode of Startup School, YC Partner Diana Hu explains what it means to build an AI…
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44 min
Stripe Head of Design Katie Dill Breaks Down Their New Website
Even the most successful websites eventually need a redesign. Take Stripe for example. After six years with the same homepage, they recently unveiled a brand new site that reflects…
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49 min
The GPT Moment for Robotics Is Here
Physical Intelligence is building a foundation model that can control any robot to do any task — what the team describes as the GPT-1 moment for robotics.The company's cross-embodi…
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21 min
This Startup Wants To Catch Cancer Before It Spreads
1 in 11 babies born in America this year will be screened by a genetic test that didn't exist a decade ago.Biotech startup BillionToOne turned a simple but radical idea—detecting r…
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31 min
This Startup Secretly Detects Fraud For Fortune 500s
In this episode of Founder Firesides, YC Managing Partner Jared Friedman talks to Karine Mellata, co-founder of Variance (W23), who is coming out of stealth and announcing their $2…
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57 min
How François Chollet Is Building A New Path To AGI
François Chollet has spent years asking a different question than most of the AI world. Instead of scaling what already works, he’s trying to understand what intelligence actually…
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13 min
Inside The Startup Reinventing America’s Trillion Dollar Chemical Industry
Solugen is reinventing the trillion-dollar chemical manufacturing industry by combining biology and chemistry in a new way. In this episode of Hard Tech, YC's Jared Friedman visits…
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40 min
Building A Global AI Startup From India
In this episode of The Lightcone, we talk with Mukund and Madhav Jha, the founders of Emergent - an AI platform that lets anyone build and ship production-ready software. In just e…
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53 min
The Future Of Brain-Computer Interfaces with Science's Max Hodak
YC alum Max Hodak is the co-founder of Neuralink and founder of Science, a company building brain-computer interfaces that can restore sight.Science has developed a tiny retinal im…
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37 min
How To Avoid AI Design Slop
As no-code design tools become more common, so do the pitfalls. You know what they look like - the purple gradients, annoying hover effects, sections that fade as you scroll. So ho…
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20 min
The Fastest Path To Super Intelligence
Poetiq is a new startup founded by former DeepMind researchers that recently achieved a major jump on the ARC-AGI and Humanity's Last Exam benchmark by layering a recursive self-im…
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23 min
The AI Agent Economy Is Here
With the takeoff of OpenClaw and MoltBook, a new agent-driven economy is taking shape.In this episode of the Lightcone, we took a look at the explosive growth of AI dev tools and w…
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50 min
Inside Claude Code With Its Creator Boris Cherny
A very special guest on this episode of the Lightcone! Boris Cherny, the creator of Claude Code, sits down to share the incredible journey of developing one of the most transformat…
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8 min
The New Way To Build A Startup
In the AI era, startups aren't winning by hiring faster — they're winning by automating as many internal functions as possible. In this episode of Main Function, Garry breaks down…
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23 min
OpenClaw And The Future Of Personal AI Agents
You’ve probably already heard all about OpenClaw (formerly Clawdbot/Moltbot). The viral sensation is an open-source AI assistant that runs on your own device, connects with messagi…
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46 min
We're All Addicted To Claude Code
Wondering why your maker-turned-manager suddenly seems distracted in meetings? Maybe they're addicted to coding agents! In this episode of Lightcone, Calvin French-Owen — a co-foun…
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6 min
How To Get Your First Customers
When you're starting out, it isn’t enough to just build a minimum viable product. You also need a minimum evolvable product - one that can adapt to the needs of those critical earl…
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16 min
Inside The Startup Building Reusable Rockets
Stoke Space is racing to build the world's first fully reusable rockets that can launch, survive reentry, and fly again and again. In this episode of Hard Tech, YC’s Aaron Epstein…