- Y Combinator has accepted 282 startups into its highly anticipated Winter 2023 accelerator program.
- Several AI startup founders who attended said the program had more in-person events.
- They also said it was a huge benefit and that being in San Francisco made a difference.
For its Winter 2023 cohort, Y Combinator has accepted founders from 282 startups for its coveted Startup Accelerator Program. And after his three-year batch, which was largely remote-first, the recent winter batch had far more face-to-face elements than the last few cohorts. Eighty-six percent of the batches were based on locations where the program would normally take place at the San Francisco headquarters. According to Y Combinator.
During an intensive three-month program from January through the first week of April, founders build their core product and meet regularly with group partners, advisors and industry leaders to grow their business. accepted YC’s standard venture funding. One of the attractions of this program is its exclusivity. Of the 20,000 startups that apply for each batch, only 1% to 2% are accepted.
Insider spoke with four AI startup founders who have gone through this latest batch and asked them to share what they learned most from their experiences. Here are the top three takeaways.
San Francisco is home to startups again and it’s worth being there
Most of YC’s founders were based in or came to San Francisco for this year’s three-month accelerator. While the 2022 summer batch was technically the first to move back to a hybrid model, only 53% of his startups in that cohort were in San Francisco or chose to relocate to the city. This time it was 86%.
Y Combinator also enhanced this batch’s in-person program, starting with a Bay Area retreat that hosted weekly events like happy hours, small-group dinners, and meetups with successful YC alumni.
And the founders who traveled to join in person said it made a world of difference to their experience. Alex Lee, CEO and co-founder of San Francisco-based AI startup Truewind says, “Meeting in person beats everything over Zoom. You can build a closer bond.”
Akash Mandavilli, co-founder of AI sales platform Zenfetch, said, “Honestly, I would have come to SF if I knew a lot of founders would go, even if YC didn’t have the face-to-face element. Let’s go,” he said.
In addition to scheduled programming, the founders made time for informal gatherings to exchange tips on which informal events to attend. Akash Sharma, CEO of machine learning operations startup Vellum He shared with Insider a spreadsheet cataloging a long list of events, networking meetups, and ongoing good times specific to generative AI in the industry. The make-up of startups in this cohort has taken a giant leap.
It’s also a smart business decision to attend as many of these events as possible.
AI startups in particular have fueled the tech companies’ recent return to San Francisco, and one region, Hayes Valley, has even earned the unofficial moniker “Cerebral Valley.”
“I think San Francisco is really making a comeback, especially in AI. People are really excited to build something,” Sharma said. “The next platform he feels like a shift. San Francisco is definitely at the heart of it.”
Build your product as quickly as possible
Every founder Insider spoke to stressed how important it was to build the product as quickly as possible during the three-month program. This is to set the stage for more success after the Demo Day, when these startups typically launch and showcase their work.
“If you keep moving fast and launch your product fast, something will stick,” says Sharma. “If you don’t move fast, the market will move.”
Shipping the product to existing users is also the best way to get feedback during non-meeting accelerators with group partners.
“You can’t spend months building something perfectly,” says Lee. Instead, “we learn from our users”.
“Make what people want”
One of the core pieces of advice provided by Y Combinator advisors has now become an informal slogan: “Make what people want.” For founders in the winter of 2023, this simple phrase was the most helpful piece of advice from experience.
Getting feedback from peers in the batch is also essential to determining if founders are on the right track or need to change course, Lee said. “It’s easier to do this in a collaborative environment than in isolation! You’ll find that you can do more in an environment where other people are also growing and shipping things quickly.” He said.
Shipping products to customers, who may be fellow peers, is also the best way to learn which features customers will find most useful or useful.
“The mistake I made in my first startup was that after three months of coding, I didn’t get a ton of user feedback,” says AIFlow, a startup that uses AI to help people. said Nick Manske, CEO and co-founder of Equity due diligence. “You can’t do this just because you love coding. You really have to do it because you love your customers, you want to make their lives better, you want to solve their problems.”
And by taking the time to do this, you’ll be rewarded with a post-demo day where investors are evaluating your startup by the time YC ends. “Investor interest is driven by similar things. As long as we keep making progress, investors will come,” he says.
