When a major new technology comes out, huge new opportunities open up for founders that get in on the ground floor. Fortunes were made when the app store came out, when online payments became easy, and when the web itself was brand new.Moments like these don’t happen often. When they do, it’s the people that put themselves right at the bleeding edge...
The founders of Eight Sleep — part of YC’s summer 2015 class — set out to solve a problem that resonates with just about everybody: they wanted better sleep. Not just more sleep. Better sleep. That real, deep, wake-up-happy sleep that most people only get when the stars align just right. A huge part of that equation, as anyone who has woken up at 2...
We’re excited to announce the 2024 YC Top Companies list!This list features the YC alumni with the highest revenue in 2023 (sorted alphabetically, as revenue is confidential for most startups).Revenue is the clearest indicator of a startup’s success, and we’re excited to see so many different types of companies represented.Separately, we have updated...
Last week we shared some awesome news: David Lieb, the creator of Bump (part of the summer 2009 batch!) and Google Photos, has joined YC as a Group Partner.I sat down with David to hear more about his story so far, and I've shared that conversation below. He'll tell us why he built Bump, why he chose to pivot it even after it saw many millions of downloads,...
Today Google Photos has more than a billion users. Most of those users probably don’t know that Google Photos' story begins at a startup called Bump — part of YC’s Summer 2009 batch.Bump was a mobile app used by more than 150M people to share photos and contact info by bumping their phones together — something that, at the time, was an absolute game...
When you’re making important decisions as a founder — like what to build, or how it should work — should you spend lots of time gathering input from others or just trust your gut? The answer: it depends. It depends on who you are, what you’re building, and what you know here.We often see founders getting it backwards. Some of the founders with the most...