YC deadline in <2 weeks; Who's applying?
If you're applying, reply below with what you're building so we can cheer you on!
If you're doing a startup and not applying, why aren't you applying?
If I were starting a company today, I would 100% apply even though I've done it before with @Tandem (S19) for a few key reasons:
The partners help. A lot. (this isn't common. Most people who say they help startups are neutral or harmful)
The network is insane, especially for b2b companies. It will accelerate your G2M like nothing else.
You'll learn what real speed looks like, by grinding alongside the top early stage founders. Every time I talk to a current or recent YC company or go to the events, I'm reminded what top speed looks like. And I'm also reminded that the speed that start-ups are capable of gets faster every year, especially with AI.
As for hesitations...sometimes people balk at the dilution, but generally speaking, the higher price that startups command in their next round at Demo Day more than compensates.
Replies
Rustic AI
Need suggestion here.
We are not sure if we should apply. We are a team of ex-YC founders but don't have a product ready just yet. We are working hard to launch before application deadline. Our concern is that we won't have enough data to talk about it during the interview. We will apply anyway. But what can we do to improve our odds of selection. Any suggestion will help.
We are building Cursor for design - Rustic AI.
Product Hunt
@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.
Unicorns Club
@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.
Handit.ai
🚀 Applying with HandIt.ai — the open-source CI/CD engine for AI.
it detects broken AI behavior instantly—both in prod and during PR checks—generates and A/B‑tests fixes, and opens the PR that puts the patch in prod, so your team stops firefighting and ships truly reliable AI. Already shipping fix PRs for teams running doc-AI and RAG agents — turning 2 a.m. firefights into self-improving AI.
Pumped to sprint alongside the F25 batch and prove AI can actually look after itself. Happy to swap notes with anyone fighting flaky agents!
Product Hunt
@jramr7 Very cool! I haven't thought too deeply about the space, but it makes sense to me that CI/CD needs would amplify or change as we use more and more AI for development.
Handit.ai
@rajiv_ayyangar 100% you see it today, AI hallucinates all the time, and when you have a chat that's fine, but if you're automating a critical process, you can't allow this kinda stuff. So we built Handit to finally solve this and make AI reliable and accurate!
Giving a second thought to applying to YC with HireCade AI Recruiter https://www.hirecade.com/
A few concerns:
Batch sizes have grown significantly
Multiple batches per year
Original partners like Paul Graham and Michael Seibel are less involved
Support may not feel as personalized as before
Several startups in the same batch often work on similar ideas
Any clarification from recent YC founders would be super helpful! 🙏
Product Hunt
@hirecadeashish
1, 2, 4: Batch sizes have actually shrunk. The attention you get from each partner is higher than it was in the past. They've sharded the batches, smartly.
The caliber of new partners is incredible. I would look into who some of the new partners are. E.g. Dave Lieb made Google Photos (and Bump before that). It's also a huge benefit to start-ups to have partners whose startup experience is a bit more fresh than Paul and Michael, although they are legends.
This has always been the case, and I wouldn't be deterred. You are an orde of magnitude (or two) more likely to die from not finding product-market fit than you are from a competitor killing you.
Product Hunt
@hirecadeashish We had a near competitor in our YC batch, and although we were a bit competitive during the batch, they've since become friends. It turns out your competitors often are the people who see the world the most similarly to you. And if you can navigate that, you can become really good friends.
We are applying for YC (Fall 25)!
A solution for you to Deploy resilient, stateful AI agents in a click.
It completely eliminate the traditional DevOps overhead and make deployment 99% faster. In a single click, agent can be deployed using prebuilt Docker image and comes with a dedicated API endpoint, state persistence with auto-recovery, auto-scaling, and built-in observability. It allows devs to focus on building agent's logic and ship fast, not managing complex infrastructure.
We already have open source demo available on our GitHub: Agentainer-lab
If you are interested, sign up early access to get free usage when we release: Agentainer
Any feedbacks would be appreciate!!
Product Hunt
@cywdev ooooh devops for agents. You should launch on PH! I'm not close enough to know what the problems in detail are, but I have a feeling that if it works well, lots of people would use it.
@rajiv_ayyangar Thx, it means a lot to us!! We are currently working on the production version and def have plan to launch on PH once we ready!
I just recorded demo video for our application, if anyone have interest to check out how it works and what it does, here you go: Demo Video (Youtube)
ZapDigits
Can I apply from anywhere? working on @ZapDigits from the Netherlands and wondering if its possible to apply from here.
@malithmcrdev Pretty sure you can! YC accept applications from all around the world and many of them already incorporated in their own country. YC Incorporating
Product Hunt
@malithmcrdev You can apply from anywhere. My stats are a bit out of date, but I think at some point half of the companies were international.
🚀 Yes, we're applying!
We're building Talentiply, because the era of the resume is over.
The resume is a data-poor, anxiety-rich document. It forces brilliant people to flatten their 3D stories of grit and creativity into a 2D list of keywords, turning their career prospects into a lottery ticket.
Our AI replaces that broken process. Instead of a form, candidates have a structured, in-depth conversation about their real challenges and accomplishments. The AI analyzes that conversation to map a deep profile of their actual abilities—the kind of insights you'd normally only discover months after hiring someone.
We just launched on Product Hunt today, and the response is already validating our thesis. The #1 comment we hear is, "I needed this yesterday."
We believe the fastest-growing companies will be the ones that understand talent best. That's what we're building.
PH Page: https://www.producthunt.com/products/talentiply
Website: https://talentiply.app
We want to apply, but we're waiting for the first traction as MAU/DAU. I heard that the traction is very important for them to make the decision on whether to get you in or not.
@magical_marzhana I've been watching some videos on YC application and you bring up a solid point, I do think Michael & Dalton said something along the lines of traction could be users, customers, or even progress building!
Will apply for suere :)
Forth application, but now updated with more traction and more clear vision.
Product Hunt
@tsvetan_99 awesome. Good luck!
@rajiv_ayyangar Thank you :)
Asa.team
Building ASA.team - an AI-powered management tool that we're making synonymous with work, to help you with whatever workplace-related!
Excited to be part of this YC batch! 🚀
Good luck to everyone applying!
We'll be applying! https://intecular.com/