Startup School</a>, our free online program and community for founders. Anyone actively looking for a co-founder can sign up at <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/cofounder-matching/">ycombinator.com/cofounder-matching. The platform has been in beta for the past few months, as we’ve experimented with the process within the Startup School community. To date, we’ve made 9,000 matches across 4,500 founders.</p>\n<p>Finding the right co-founder is an incredibly important step in the startup journey. At YC, we have endless anecdotes that show building a company with a co-founder greatly helps with productivity and morale. This is supported by our data: while we do <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/library/7P-does-yc-fund-solo-founders//">fund solo founders</a>, only four of the <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies//">top 100 YC companies</a> came to YC without a co-founder.</p>\n<p>But finding a co-founder who is compatible with you — and ready to take that leap when you are — can be very difficult. Within the Startup School community, 20% of active founders report that they’re seeking a co-founder, and 25% of aspiring founders cite not having a co-founder as a blocker to starting their company full-time. Many of our users have tried many avenues for a long time, with little success.</p>\n<p>We built our co-founder matching platform to tackle this problem. When you sign up, you tell us a number of things about yourself and your preferences for a co-founder (e.g. interests, location, skills). We then show you profiles of candidates that most closely match your ideal co-founder. When you find a candidate that piques your interest, you can send them a message, and if they accept, we match the two of you. The platform is optimized for rapid review to maximize the chances you find the right fit.</p>\n<p>If that sounds a bit like online dating, that’s no coincidence. Like a romantic partner, a co-founder is someone you’ll depend on and spend a great deal of time with, hopefully for many years. You probably shouldn’t marry someone after just one date, and similarly, it’ll take more than one video call to decide whether to co-found a company with someone. We encourage matched co-founders to meet and, when appropriate, work together on a time-boxed trial project with clear expectations and goals in order to vet co-founder compatibility. One interesting commonality our founders can usually count on sharing — having all gone through Startup School — is alignment on the <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.startupschool.org/curriculum/">YC playbook</a> on how to run a startup.</p>\n<p>We have seen some early signs of success: two companies who met through the platform earlier this year were accepted into the YC Summer 2021 batch! We’re really excited for them, and we hope to see more success stories as we continue to experiment and iterate on our solution to a big problem.</p>\n<p><img src=https://www.ycombinator.com/"/blog/content/images/wordpress/2021/06/cofounder-matching.png/" alt=\"YC's co-founder matching platform\" /></p>\n<!--kg-card-end: html-->","comment_id":"1104838","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/sus-cofounder-matching-og-2-2.png","featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2021-07-06T02:00:09.000-07:00","updated_at":"2022-02-07T12:53:11.000-08:00","published_at":"2021-07-06T02:00:09.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":"We’re excited to announce Y Combinator’s co-founder matching platform is now available for everyone through Startup School, our free online program and community for founders. 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If you’re a YC alum, an investor, industry leader, or are interested in starting a bio or healthcare company, we’d love to see you there.","codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71072","name":"Surbhi Sarna","slug":"surbhi-sarna","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/09/1563221214332.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Surbhi is a group partner at Y Combinator. 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","reading_time":1,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":null},{"id":"61fe29f1c7139e0001a71c0d","uuid":"47611201-9328-451f-ba0e-fd4b71bd84c5","title":"YC's Spring Tour 2022","slug":"ycs-spring-tour-2022","html":"<p>We are excited to announce our 2022 Spring Outreach Tour. Our goal is to virtually meet founders and future founders from cities and universities around the world. At each location, we will host talks with YC group partners and YC alumni, who will discuss their founder journey, the YC experience and myths around starting startups.</p><p>We will also be hosting two virtual admissions sessions to chat about the YC application process, give application tips and answer your questions about the batch program.</p><p>This year, we’re working with AWS Activate to provide $1,000 in AWS credits to spend on AWS services, and $350 in Developer Support plan credits to attendees. This is on top of any AWS credits you may have received from AWS Activate previously. 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We believe that talent is worldwide and look forward to seeing our community of founders grow.</p>","comment_id":"61f5fff8eb74f90001a957de","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/01/26.png","featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2022-01-29T19:03:20.000-08:00","updated_at":"2022-02-17T12:19:39.000-08:00","published_at":"2022-01-28T09:00:00.000-08:00","custom_excerpt":"We are excited to announce our 2022 Spring Outreach Tour. If you are starting a startup or have questions about YC, we want to meet you. We believe that talent is worldwide and look forward to seeing our community of founders grow.","codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710ca","name":"Tamanna Khemani","slug":"tamanna-khemani","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/Tamanna.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Tamanna is YC's Outreach Manager. 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Previously, she worked on business operations at All Raise.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/tamanna-khemani/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-news/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/ycs-spring-tour-2022/","excerpt":"We are excited to announce our 2022 Spring Outreach Tour. Our goal is to virtually meet founders and future founders from cities and universities around the world. At each location, we will host talks with YC group partners and YC alumni, who will discuss their founder journey, the YC experience and myths around starting startups.","reading_time":1,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":null},{"id":"63484a5f2184dc0001eebf38","uuid":"003fb0ef-7ac0-41e4-93fc-a91eca0f7bc1","title":"YC ClimateTech Co-Founder Meetup","slug":"yc-climatetech-co-founder-meetup","html":"<p>We’re excited to announce the first <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://startupschool.org/climatetech-cofounder-meetup/">YC ClimateTech Co-Founder Meetup</a>! It will take place at <strong>11am PT on Saturday, October 29, 2022</strong>. This event is for anyone interested in meeting a potential co-founder in the ClimateTech space.</p><!--kg-card-begin: html--><center>\n<a class=\"ycdc-retro-btn ycdc-retro-btn-gold mt-[-10px] ml-[13px]\" href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://startupschool.org/climatetech-cofounder-meetup/" style=\"text-decoration: none;\" title=\"YC ClimateTech Co-Founder Meetup\" target=\"_blank\">Register to Attend</a>\n</center><!--kg-card-end: html--><p>The 2-hour virtual program will feature a 30-minute conversation by YC Group Partner Gustaf Alstromer and YC ClimateTech founders on how to find a good startup idea, and how to make progress in ClimateTech. This will be followed by a speed-dating session on the <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://ycombinator.com/cofounder-matching/">YC co-founder matching platform</a>, in which founders are matched for 5-minute 1:1 conversations.</p><p><strong>Speakers</strong></p><p><strong>Gustaf Alstromer</strong>, YC Group Partner<br><strong>Paul Gross</strong>, Co-Founder & CEO of <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://remoracarbon.com//">Remora (W21)<br><strong>Jose Ignacio</strong>, Co-Founder of <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.waterplan.com//">Waterplan (S21)<br><strong>Caroline McKeon & Daria Balatsky,</strong> Co-Founders of <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.alga.bio//">Alga Biosciences</a> (W22)</p><p>If you’re interested in starting a ClimateTech startup and want to meet other potential co-founders in the space, we hope you join us!</p><p><strong>Registration is limited and closes on Tuesday, October 25th. </strong><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://startupschool.org/climatetech-cofounder-meetup/">Sign up to attend here</strong></a><strong>.</strong></p>","comment_id":"63484a5f2184dc0001eebf38","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/10/climatetech2.jpeg","featured":true,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2022-10-13T10:26:55.000-07:00","updated_at":"2022-10-14T09:27:35.000-07:00","published_at":"2022-10-14T09:00:00.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":"We’re excited to announce the first YC ClimateTech Co-Founder Meetup. 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Y Combinator Launches Co-Founder Matching Platform
We’re excited to announce Y Combinator’s co-founder matching platform is now available for everyone through Startup School, our free online program and community for founders. Anyone actively looking for a co-founder can sign up at ycombinator.com/cofounder-matching. The platform has been in beta for the past few months, as we’ve experimented with the process within the Startup School community. To date, we’ve made 9,000 matches across 4,500 founders.
Finding the right co-founder is an incredibly important step in the startup journey. At YC, we have endless anecdotes that show building a company with a co-founder greatly helps with productivity and morale. This is supported by our data: while we do fund solo founders, only four of the top 100 YC companies came to YC without a co-founder.
But finding a co-founder who is compatible with you — and ready to take that leap when you are — can be very difficult. Within the Startup School community, 20% of active founders report that they’re seeking a co-founder, and 25% of aspiring founders cite not having a co-founder as a blocker to starting their company full-time. Many of our users have tried many avenues for a long time, with little success.
We built our co-founder matching platform to tackle this problem. When you sign up, you tell us a number of things about yourself and your preferences for a co-founder (e.g. interests, location, skills). We then show you profiles of candidates that most closely match your ideal co-founder. When you find a candidate that piques your interest, you can send them a message, and if they accept, we match the two of you. The platform is optimized for rapid review to maximize the chances you find the right fit.
If that sounds a bit like online dating, that’s no coincidence. Like a romantic partner, a co-founder is someone you’ll depend on and spend a great deal of time with, hopefully for many years. You probably shouldn’t marry someone after just one date, and similarly, it’ll take more than one video call to decide whether to co-found a company with someone. We encourage matched co-founders to meet and, when appropriate, work together on a time-boxed trial project with clear expectations and goals in order to vet co-founder compatibility. One interesting commonality our founders can usually count on sharing — having all gone through Startup School — is alignment on the YC playbook on how to run a startup.
We have seen some early signs of success: two companies who met through the platform earlier this year were accepted into the YC Summer 2021 batch! We’re really excited for them, and we hope to see more success stories as we continue to experiment and iterate on our solution to a big problem.
Catheryn (Cat) is a Product Engineer at YC focused on Startup School. Before that she was an engineer at Instagram and Facebook. Cat has a B.S. in Computer Science and Math from MIT.
