YC Library</a>).</p><p><strong>Below is the introduction, and you can read the full <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/library/D0-startups-for-students-guide/">Startups for Students Guide here</a>.</strong></p><h2 id=\"introduction\"><strong>INTRODUCTION</strong></h2><p>In his 2007 essay “<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html/">Why to Not Not Start a Startup</a>,” YC co-founder Paul Graham wrote about how common uncertainty was among people considering starting a company. “There's nothing wrong with being unsure,” he noted. “You’re part of a grand tradition.” When Y Combinator launched in 2005, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://www.paulgraham.com/mit.html/">starting a startup was an unusual career path for recent graduates</a>. It was hard to be taken seriously by investors if you didn’t have an MBA or years of experience in business or tech. To get a sense of how many startups were in the world, look at TechCrunch in 2005. It published about 40 company launches per month, and YC itself only got a couple hundred applications for its first batches.</p><p>The world has changed since then. Today we get tens of thousands of applications per year. On any given day you can look on Product Hunt and see dozens of new companies launch. Taking a chance and starting a startup is not the foreign concept it once was. While it has become more common for people around the world to start startups, there are many more who could consider startups as an option. For example, lots of folks choose a career in finance or as an engineer at a big company without considering other options. Whether you know you want to become a founder or are more interested in finding a job at a startup, we want to equip you with the best resources for getting started.</p><p>In this guide, we’ll discuss why you should think about starting a startup and why you should consider not starting a startup. We’ll also talk about what you should do in college and walk-through some tips for applying to Y Combinator. And if it turns out being a founder isn’t for you, we’ll talk about how to choose the right company and the benefits of working at a startup.</p><p><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/library/D0-startups-for-students-guide/">Read the Startups for Students Guide here</a>.</p>","comment_id":"61f5f94feb74f90001a95776","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/01/Startups-for-Students-Guide.png","featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2022-01-29T18:34:55.000-08:00","updated_at":"2022-02-01T16:22:58.000-08:00","published_at":"2022-01-18T09:00:00.000-08:00","custom_excerpt":"In the past two years, we’ve met over 6,000 students during our virtual outreach tours. We compiled a list of the questions they most frequently asked about startups, and created this Startups for Students Guide.","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. 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/"},{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710a2","name":"Kat Mañalac","slug":"kat-manalac","profile_image":"https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/c15939b217561ebda4c129bfea5f65f3?s=512&d=mm&r=g","cover_image":null,"bio":"Kat is the Managing Outreach Officer at YC. She was Chief of Staff to Alexis Ohanian, cofounder of reddit, before joining YC as its Director of Outreach. Prior to that, Kat was at WIRED Magazine.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/kat-manalac/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71174","name":"Advice","slug":"advice","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/advice/"},{"id":"61fe2438c7139e0001a70e98","name":"Getting Started","slug":"getting-started","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/getting-started/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71177","name":"Jobs","slug":"jobs","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/jobs/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71170","name":"Startups","slug":"startups","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/startups/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71171","name":"Work at a Startup","slug":"work-at-a-startup","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/work-at-a-startup/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7117f","name":"Startup School","slug":"startup-school","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/startup-school/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710ca","name":"Tamanna Khemani","slug":"tamanna-khemani","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/Tamanna.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Tamanna is YC's Outreach Manager. 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":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71174","name":"Advice","slug":"advice","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/advice/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/startups-for-students-guide/","excerpt":"In the past two years, we’ve met over 6,000 students during our virtual outreach tours. 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Over 380 startups have posted roles with equity, with some early engineering roles offering 2%.</p><p>At YC, we tell our founders to be generous with equity, and even suggest giving <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/library/9j-how-much-equity-should-i-give-my-first-employees/">10% to the first 10 employees</a>. Early employees are taking a bigger risk by working at an early stage startup, and their upside should be significantly greater than employees at later stage or public companies. </p><p>Below are a few startups on the platform hiring and providing equity compensation on their job listing. See the full list of startups by creating a profile on <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs/">YC's job board</a> and find yours.</p><p><strong><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/mutableai/jobs/qnjnCR3-founding-full-stack-software-engineer/">Founding Full Stack Software Engineer at MutableAI (W22)</a></strong></p><ul><li><strong>About the company: </strong>We believe the future of software development is AI accelerated and we’re starting by converting prototype quality Python code into high quality production code using AI and meta programming. Our long term mission: to enable programmers to massively decrease the time to create high quality production code in all languages using AI.</li><li><strong>Comp & equity: </strong>$100k - $180k • 0.50% - 2.00%</li></ul><p><strong><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/terrace/jobs/EpJEwWb-senior-infrastructure-engineer/">Senior Infrastructure Engineer at Terrace (S22)</a></strong></p><ul><li><strong>About the company: </strong>Terrace is a regulatory-compliant, all-in-one institutional-grade trading UI / terminal and infrastructure layer for DeFi (lending, staking, liquidity, borrowing, and exchange).</li><li><strong>Comp & equity: </strong>$130k - $165k, 0.30% - 1.50%</li></ul><p><strong><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/novig/jobs/UwWWeLK-mobile-engineer/">Mobile Engineer at Novig (S22)</a></strong></p><ul><li><strong>About the company: </strong>Novig is the first high-frequency sports trading platform in the US. A commission-free P2P exchange model replaces the exploitative and unprofitable betting model of traditional sportsbooks.</li><li><strong>Comp & equity: </strong>$110k - $170k, 0.05% - 1.00%</li></ul><p><strong><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/rally-2/jobs/FYFNiTn-founding-software-engineer-product/">Founding Software Engineer (Product) at Rally (W22)</a></strong></p><ul><li><strong>About the company: </strong>Rally makes it easy for Product, Design, and UX Research teams to talk to their users. We're building the world’s best User Research CRM - a platform that automates outreach, screening, scheduling, incentives, and participant tracking, all in one place.</li><li><strong>Comp & equity: </strong>$100k - $150k, 0.50% - 1.50%</li></ul><p><strong><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/ploomber/jobs/rwKhCMS-senior-software-engineer-full-stack/">Senior Software Engineer (Full Stack) at Ploomber (W22)</a></strong></p><ul><li><strong>About the company: </strong>We are building a cloud platform to help data scientists develop and deploy projects without a dedicated engineering team to support them. Our tools are helping data scientists have more ownership over their work and work more efficiently using interactive tools such as Jupyter.</li><li><strong>Comp & equity: </strong>$130k - $170k • Up to 0.50%</li></ul><p><strong><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/vessel/jobs/JeIBiSj-founding-engineer/">Founding Engineer at Vessel (W22)</a></strong></p><ul><li><strong>About the company: </strong>The universal API for CRMs. Over 90% of businesses use a CRM, but many companies with integrations only support 1-2 CRMs. It takes 65 CRMs to cover 60% of the market meaning existing companies with integrations are missing out on a huge number of potential customers.</li><li><strong>Comp & equity: </strong>$110k - $190k • 0.50% - 1.50%</li></ul><p><strong><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/windmill/jobs/WlSHAed-founding-engineer/">Founding Engineer at Windmill (S22)</a></strong></p><ul><li><strong>About the company: </strong>Windmill (windmill.dev) is an open-source & self-hostable developer platform for multi-step automation & internal tools. We are an alternative to airplane.dev and pipedream.</li><li><strong>Comp & equity: </strong>$70k - $110k, 0.25% - 2.00%</li></ul>","comment_id":"62ccbd1b40d57c0001d587fd","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/08/Filter-by-equity-at-YC-startups.png","featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2022-07-11T17:15:23.000-07:00","updated_at":"2022-08-03T08:26:38.000-07:00","published_at":"2022-08-03T08:00:00.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":"YC's job board now lets job seekers filter by equity offered on the job description. 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Choi","slug":"rchoi","profile_image":"//www.gravatar.com/avatar/36ba914c5f191f813e96db0296154469?s=250&d=mm&r=x","cover_image":null,"bio":"Ryan works with YC companies to find great engineers — from 2-person startups to larger ones like Airbnb, Stripe and Instacart.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/rchoi/"},"primary_tag":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/filter-by-equity-at-yc-startups/","excerpt":"YC's job board now lets job seekers filter by equity offered on the job description. Over 380 startups have posted roles with equity, with some early engineering roles offering 2%.","reading_time":2,"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":"61fe29f1c7139e0001a71c04","uuid":"137bef50-c46e-42ab-9496-bd321c54e3fa","title":"Does co-founder matching work? It did for these YC companies.","slug":"does-co-founder-matching-work","html":"<p>We launched the co-founder matching platform earlier this year to help founders find their co-founders. When you sign up, you tell us about yourself and what you’re looking for, and we show you profiles that most closely match your ideal co-founder. If you message a candidate and they accept, we match the two of you.</p><p>Co-founder matching has also seen success with brand-new companies. Two pairs of co-founders met through the platform earlier this year, worked together on trial projects, became fully committed co-founders, applied to YC, and were accepted into the Summer 2021 batch!</p><p><strong><strong><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.sequincard.com//">Sequin (YC S21) is one of these companies. Vrinda Gupta had left her job after launching credit cards like the Chase Sapphire Reserve at Visa to work on a product to help women build credit. She spent a year working as a solo founder, and, in that time, raised a pre-seed and built an MVP. She knew she needed a technical co-founder who was mission driven, had fintech expertise, and was in it for the long haul.</p><figure class=\"kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption\"><img src=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://blog.ycombinator.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Sequin.jpeg/" class=\"kg-image\" alt loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption>Sequin (YC S21) co-founders, Vrinda Gupta and Mark Thomas.</figcaption></figure><p>That person was Mark Thomas. He had ten years of engineering experience at Paypal, cared deeply about gender equity, and spent six years as CTO of family-oriented startups. They had an instant connection and arranged to meet in person soon after. Vrinda recalls, “We met the day after we matched, and the day after, and then the day after that.”</p><p>Together, they went through YC’s batch this summer and <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.forbes.com/sites/geristengel/2021/09/15/debit-card-startup-builds-credit-for-women/?sh=6283b60b3c67\%22>raised $5.7M</a>.</p><p><strong><strong><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.kiwibiosciences.com//">Kiwi Biosciences</a></strong></strong> (YC S21) has a similar story. Anjie Liu started the company to solve her own pains with irritable bowel syndrome. She had a founding scientist to tackle R&D, but wanted a co-founder to help her build a consumer brand and commercialize the product.</p><figure class=\"kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption\"><img src=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://blog.ycombinator.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/kiwi.jpeg/" class=\"kg-image\" alt loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption>Anjie Liu and David Hachuel, co-founders of Kiwi Biosciences (YC S21).</figcaption></figure><p>When Anjie saw David Hachuel’s profile on YC co-founder matching, she knew that he was “exactly what [she] was looking for.” David had previously sold a startup in the same space, and was immediately interested in her idea.</p><p>They took a very structured approach to co-founder matching. Both founders answered all 50 questions posed in <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://proof-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/firstround/50 Questions for Co-Founders.pdf/">First Round’s co-founder questionnaire</a>. They found deep alignment on “all the important things” (conflict resolution, vision for culture, etc.). When their month-long trial ended and it came time to say go or no-go, the decision was easy.</p><p>Anjie and David worked remotely for four months and finally met in person after getting into YC. They went through YC and <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/14/kiwi-bio-aims-to-free-irritable-bowel-syndrome-sufferers-from-restrictive-diets//">raised $1.5M</a>.</p><p>We’re ecstatic about the companies who met through our co-founder matching and we’re excited to see the platform continue to grow and support more awesome founders in the future!</p><p>Looking for a co-founder? Check out the platform at <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://blog.ycombinator.com/does-co-founder-matching-work/www.ycombinator.com/cofounder-matching/">www.ycombinator.com/cofounder-matching.","comment_id":"61a505fbcf1ec1000121a57c","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2021/12/BlogTwitter-Image-Template--11-.png","featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2021-11-29T08:55:23.000-08:00","updated_at":"2024-10-23T02:26:59.000-07:00","published_at":"2021-11-24T08:55:00.000-08:00","custom_excerpt":"Read about how the founders of Seer, Sequin, and Kiwi Biosciences used YC’s co-founder matching platform to complete their founding team.","codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71081","name":"Catheryn Li","slug":"catheryn","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/10/catheryn.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Catheryn (Cat) is a Product Engineer at YC focused on Startup School. 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In the past two years, we’ve met over 6,000 students during our virtual outreach tours. We compiled a list of the questions they most frequently asked about startups, and created this Startups for Students Guide.
The guide is informed by hundreds of hours of talks, blog posts, and essays we’ve written for students who are interested in starting or working at startups – many of which can be found in the YC Library).
In his 2007 essay “Why to Not Not Start a Startup,” YC co-founder Paul Graham wrote about how common uncertainty was among people considering starting a company. “There's nothing wrong with being unsure,” he noted. “You’re part of a grand tradition.” When Y Combinator launched in 2005, starting a startup was an unusual career path for recent graduates. It was hard to be taken seriously by investors if you didn’t have an MBA or years of experience in business or tech. To get a sense of how many startups were in the world, look at TechCrunch in 2005. It published about 40 company launches per month, and YC itself only got a couple hundred applications for its first batches.
The world has changed since then. Today we get tens of thousands of applications per year. On any given day you can look on Product Hunt and see dozens of new companies launch. Taking a chance and starting a startup is not the foreign concept it once was. While it has become more common for people around the world to start startups, there are many more who could consider startups as an option. For example, lots of folks choose a career in finance or as an engineer at a big company without considering other options. Whether you know you want to become a founder or are more interested in finding a job at a startup, we want to equip you with the best resources for getting started.
In this guide, we’ll discuss why you should think about starting a startup and why you should consider not starting a startup. We’ll also talk about what you should do in college and walk-through some tips for applying to Y Combinator. And if it turns out being a founder isn’t for you, we’ll talk about how to choose the right company and the benefits of working at a startup.
Tamanna is YC's Outreach Manager. Previously, she worked on business operations at All Raise.
Kat Mañalac
Kat is the Managing Outreach Officer at YC. She was Chief of Staff to Alexis Ohanian, cofounder of reddit, before joining YC as its Director of Outreach. Prior to that, Kat was at WIRED Magazine.