YC deadline in <2 weeks; Who's applying?

@juvenal_lunguenda That's a lot of buzzwords. I'd suggest really distilling what you're building into plain English. Also, how do you know people want this? I've talked to a few marketplaces for agents, and I'm always a bit skeptical. Most people aren't really using agents. So why would people want a marketplace for agents?

@juvenal_lunguenda Really interesting to see so many founders applying to YC and pushing their ideas forward. What stands out is how authenticity and real-world validation matter more than just buzzwords. It reminds me of how people talk about Real muha meds in the vaping space — the focus isn’t only on the name, but on actual quality, trust, and the experience users get. Whether it’s startups or consumer products, the real value always comes from delivering something genuine that people truly want.

@aurelia_b  super excited for you to take this leap! Go Go Go !!

@aymeric_pineau  @aurelia_b  All the Best Team Intlayer 👍👍

@rajiv_ayyangar  @aurelia_b Super excited! let’s pull out all the stops and make the most of this opportunity!

@dbul Scheduling is a holy grail problem with a large graveyard. Huge if you can crack it. How well does it actually work?

@dbul Super interesting — scheduling is one of those “graveyard problems” where the winners usually have two things:

Curious: how much real-world usage you’ve already seen? Not beta signups, but actual end-to-end meetings successfully booked, rescheduled, canceled, etc. YC (and investors in general) usually look for behavioral validation, not just feature completeness.

Inside Unicorns Club we see this pattern across many tools:

the moment teams get even 20–50 weekly active “real” users (not friends), retention tells the whole story.

How’s it looking on your side today? Any early retention or repeat-usage signals since launch?

@axel_brunet This is lovely! I messaged you on LinkedIn to discuss a potential collaboration.

@axel_brunet Amazing, good luck. This is such an incredibly valuable problem. Sounds like you're building a product for yourself, which is a great way to approach a startup. I don't know how it is in Europe, but in the U.S., building tools for medical professionals often requires some creative solutions for getting into market. How easy is it to get MVPs into the hands of customers?

@axel_brunet interesting! do you have a co-founder? do you have a clinical background, medical degree, or experience inside healthcare systems?

In our data at Unicorns Club, investors tend to look for two things specifically in products like this:

1. credible domain expertise (someone who deeply understands the medical workflow, regulations, documentation patterns),

2. a team, not a single point of failure — especially when the product touches compliance, safety, and high-stakes decisions.

Your story about burnout gives a strong “why,” but YC and early investors often ask who complements the technical side and who ensures the product matches how doctors actually work day to day.

@g888 News is such a tricky consumer space, but can be big if done right. I had high hopes for @Artifact . Do you have a sense of what happened to them?

@victoria_wu You should apply! I think with the community and general vibes of San Francisco, it's well worth moving to SF for three months. Garry in particular has been really intentional and effective at creating community in-person.

@jonayed_tanjim 

Mega nit but your first card is larger than the others!

@jonayed_tanjim I'm not close enough to Webhooks to understand if this is a valuable problem to solve. But if this is a common build vs buy decision, my general feeling is that all of these decisions for Dev/Infra will move towards buy. Do you have customers yet?

@jonayed_tanjim how do you think about the market size and the growth story here?

Inside Unicorns Club we see a lot of tools that developers love, but YC and most venture investors usually look for something slightly different:

a clear path from “useful tool” → large, fast-growing market with expansion potential.

Right now Vartiq feels like a tool, but I’m trying to understand what turns it into a venture-scale company?

Your execution looks great — I’m just wondering what the bigger arc of the story is.

@okhlopkov subjective experience, a lot of people I know who have gone on to start their own gigs went to YC just for visibility and it absolutely helped them. Some investors just want that orange badge on your page.

Also people absolutely realize the chance of success is low, but thats regardless of YC for a startup. When you're building alone or in a small team, it's a very small and special class of person (and I mean this in a very positive way) who can wake up and say "this is it".

YC is the hypeman for so many startups, and sometimes people need that to keep going.

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Second side note, I've seen successful startup founders tell their protege's to apply to YC. Not to get in or anything, but solely as a humbling experience when they don't. There's so many reasons that an institution like YC matters in my opinion, and it's not solely just to have people get in. If thats peoples reasons for applying then yeah, I agree, this isn't the way to go about things.

@ideaxton I'm not sure. They might have something on their site about it. They also might have some ways of helping you get over here. I think it's worth applying at the very least. The application has a good set of questions to ask yourself about your project.

@shashwat_verma2 Yeah, I'd apply anyway. My general thinking is that the number one thing you can do to improve your odds of selection is also the number one thing you can do to make progress on the product. For example, it could be getting early user interviews or de-risking the number one risk.

@shashwat_verma2 Totally agree that you should apply — teams with prior YC experience usually get evaluated on a different axis (clarity, velocity, and depth of insight).

YC doesn’t actually need “a lot of data,” but they do need evidence that you understand your problem better than anyone else.

But, anyway, at the earliest stage, YC (and most investors) look for signals, not fully polished products. Strong signals can be:

• a tiny cohort of real users who return (retention > features),

• even a small amount of revenue or clear willingness to pay,

• LOIs from teams who strongly want what you’re building,

• a sharp insight from problem interviews that others don’t see,

• a strong founder background (exits, deep domain experience). — YOU HAVE IT!

I guess, if you have at least one or two of these before the interview, you’re already ahead of most applicants.