Y Combinator Startup Podcast

Y Combinator

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.

  1. -5 J

    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 messaging apps you already use, and goes beyond chat to actually execute tasks like managing your email, calendars, files, workflows, and more. Now meet the man behind it. YC’s Raphael Schaad sat down with Peter Steinberger, the creator of OpenClaw, to discuss the “aha” moment behind the viral personal AI agent, why local-first agents could replace many of today’s apps, and how personal agents will reshape the future of software. Chapters: 00:00 – OpenClaw takes over the internet 00:44 – Life after going viral 01:28 – Why OpenClaw took off, what sets it apart 02:56 – Bots talking to bots (and hiring humans) 04:11 – From “God AI” to swarm intelligence 05:07 – Peter’s original “aha” moment 06:38 – Rebuilding the agent as a conversation 07:38 – The moment it exceeded expectations 10:21 – Are apps going to disappear? 12:31 – Memory, data silos, and ownership 14:39 – The privacy reality of personal agents 15:05 – Letting the bot loose in public Discord 16:55 – Giving an agent a personality 18:19 – Contrarian building philosophy 20:09 – CLIs vs MCPs 21:28 – Building for humans first 21:46 – The road ahead Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs

    23 min
  2. We're All Addicted To Claude Code

    -6 J

    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-founder of Segment and former engineer on OpenAI's Codex team — joins us to talk about why coding agents suddenly feel so powerful, the differences between Codex, Claude Code, and Cursor, and what the future of work will look like.

    46 min
  3. How To Get Your First Customers

    14 JANV.

    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 early customers. In this episode of Main Function, YC General Partner Ankit Gupta offers an update to the classic MVP playbook. He’ll outline strategies for getting your first customers, the power of adaptability and how feedback from early users will ultimately shape the future of your product and your company. Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs Chapters: 00:00 – The Minimum Evolvable Product 00:46 – Finding the First Believers 01:29 – Counterintuitive Rules To Get Early Users 02:10 – Learn Fast, Don’t Fear Churn 02:52 – How Early Users Shape the Market You Enter 04:22 – Tesla Case Study 05:14 – How To Build To Evolve

    6 min
  4. Inside The Startup Building Reusable Rockets

    8 JANV.

    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 sits down with Stoke Space co-founders Andy Lapsa and Tom Feldman to find out why they chose to take on one of the hardest problems in rocket science, how an obsession with efficiency gives them an edge, and what full reusability could unlock for the future of spaceflight. Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs

    16 min
  5. What Surprised Us Most In 2025

    22/12/2025

    What Surprised Us Most In 2025

    2025 was the year AI stopped feeling chaotic and started feeling buildable. In this Lightcone episode, the YC partners break down the surprises of the year, from shifting model dominance to why the real opportunity is moving back to the application layer, and why the next wave of AI startups may be just getting started.

    30 min
  6. How Intelligent Is AI, Really?

    17/12/2025

    How Intelligent Is AI, Really?

    ARC-AGI is redefining how to measure progress on the path to AGI - focusing on reasoning, generalization, and adaptability instead of memorization or scale. During this month's NeurIPS 2025 conference, YC's Diana Hu sat down with ARC Prize Foundation President Greg Kamradt to find out why most AI benchmarks fail, how ARC-AGI reveals the limits of today’s models, and why measuring intelligence may be harder than building it.

    12 min

  7. 12/12/2025

    The End of the Designer–Engineer Divide

    Head of Design Ryo Lu helped transform Cursor from a feature-layer on top of VS Code into one of the world's leading AI code editors.He joins YC's Aaron Epstein on Design Review to talk about the path that brought him to Cursor, how rapid prototyping reshaped the core product and how he's breaking down the barriers that once separated designers and coders.

    42 min
  8. From Pivot Hell To $1.4 Billion Unicorn

    10/12/2025

    From Pivot Hell To $1.4 Billion Unicorn

    In just a few years, James Hawkins took PostHog from an idea hacked together right before YC's W20 deadline to a unicorn powering product analytics for thousands of teams. He joins YC's Brad Flora to talk about surviving six months of "pivot hell," why open-source analytics was the breakthrough, and how PostHog grew from fighting for its first users to launching full product lines—plus what he's learned about momentum, staying close to customers, and using transparency and humor to build a company that stands out.

    39 min
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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.

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