How to Get Into Y Combinator in 2025
Y Combinator is less a program and more a forcing function. For three months you operate with urgency, learn from builders who’ve scaled consequential companies, and gain credibility that opens doors with customers, hires, and later investors. Getting in isn’t about theatrics or glossy decks; it’s about making the core of your company unmistakably clear. Partners need to grasp the problem, why now is the right moment, the edge your team has, and the small but real signals that users care. In 2025, that hasn’t changed. The application is read quickly and seriously, the one-minute founder video reveals how you communicate under constraint, and the ten-minute interview rewards clarity over performance. Clarity across the application, video, and interview is what turns curiosity into conviction.
Clarity starts with a one-sentence description that a smart outsider can repeat five minutes later. A sturdy line usually includes the user, the job, and the outcome: who it’s for, what it does, and why life is better. Write a few versions that emphasize different angles, the painful job today, the “magical” outcome with your product, the distribution wedge that gets you users, the technical edge that keeps you ahead, the experience that makes you credible. Read them aloud and keep the one that lands instantly without explanation. If your first sentence requires a second sentence to decode it, you’re not done yet. Turn that sentence into a short, present-tense product walkthrough. Describe what the user does first, where value appears, and the after-state versus their current workaround. Cut adjectives; let specifics carry the weight. Infrastructure and AI can sound abstract, so translate them into a human story: what breaks today, what switches on with your product, what becomes newly possible afterward. Reviewers should be able to retell your walkthrough to a colleague and have it make sense. If they can’t, compress again.
Make founder–market fit obvious in two lines. This is not a résumé dump; it’s the thread that makes you credible now. Maybe you owned a brittle pipeline at scale and kept duct-taping the same fix until the wedge revealed itself. Maybe you’ve lived a regulated workflow and can land design partners others can’t. Maybe you’ve spent years inside the exact behavior you’re trying to change and can predict objections before customers voice them. YC wants edges, not polish. State yours plainly and move on.
Gather receipts of progress and narrate them in tight, causal sentences. YC isn’t grading a snapshot; it’s inferring your slope. “Onboarding dropped from 40→9 minutes after we pre-filled forms; weekly actives 2,300→4,100 in 30 days; churn 5.1%→3.8% after switching to usage-based pricing” says more than a page of prose. Evidence isn’t only revenue: activation, repeat usage, cohort retention, cycle time from idea to ship, or credible pilots all count. The pattern is cause → effect → decision: what you tried, what moved, and what you’ll do next. That rhythm reads like a team that will thrive in-batch. When the form asks about market, avoid theater. Build it bottom-up: who buys first, what budget or workflow you replace, a price tied to value, and how many reachable buyers exist in your first geography. Then map the expansion: adjacent roles, neighboring workflows, a higher tier unlocked by data you accumulate. No one expects omniscience; they expect a credible next hill to take. Treat competition the same way. Say where you win today, what could erode that edge, and what you’re doing this month to widen the gap. If your edge is deployment speed, show install times and time-to-value; if it’s accuracy, show a benchmark and who verified it; if it’s distribution, show the channel that already produces qualified demand.
Treat risk like an adult. Name the biggest one in a sentence and say what you’re doing this week to shrink it. If you depend on third-party data, explain your fallback and diversification. If unit economics are tight, describe the product or distribution tweak that pushes them into a better band. YC knows every startup has risk; evasiveness is the red flag, not the risk itself. Distribution is the quiet unlock in many strong applications. “Content and ads” is not a plan without evidence. Show how the product finds users by design. Maybe an integration places your tool where purchase intent already exists. Maybe a link-based workflow spreads because the recipient experiences value immediately. Maybe a partner channel you’ve actually tested throws off qualified leads at an acceptable cost. Anchor claims in what users do today, not in a hypothetical funnel tomorrow, and include at least one concrete example from your own pipeline.
If you’re early, you can still show evidence. Ten structured interviews with one role can beat a hundred casual chats. Ask what they do now, where it breaks, how they fix it, what the fix costs, and who else is involved. Turn those transcripts into one small product decision you can ship this week; measure the effect; iterate. A founder who ships, measures, and adjusts is easier to believe than a founder who explains without changing anything. YC cares that you move the ball in the real world—even by inches.
Recent public guidance from YC leaders through 2024–2025 repeats the same message: warm intros aren’t required, partners do read applications, and simple, direct communication beats polish. Garry Tan keeps urging founders to just apply and show that they build; Dalton Caldwell keeps pushing bottom-up thinking and compressing signal; Michael Seibel keeps reminding applicants to rehearse answers that fit into a breath and a number. Read those pieces with a highlighter and you’ll mark the same lines this guide leans on: be legible, be specific, and keep shipping.
Finally, prepare emotionally, not just tactically. The interview is short and fast because partners compress a lot of thinking into a small window. Don’t mistake speed for hostility. Answer directly, pause when you finish a thought, and treat follow-ups as a search for the next most important fact. Bring a live demo or a tight screen flow you can show in 30–45 seconds if asked, but don’t depend on it. You’re not performing; you’re collaborating with demanding peers to surface the highest-signal truths in ten minutes. That habit, speaking plainly and returning to concrete reality carries you through both the interview and the batch.
How to Apply (and Win) in 2025
Block one focused week to sharpen everything without turning it into theater. Day one, write multiple one-liners and keep the one that lands instantly. Day two and three, run structured conversations with real buyers, capture their exact words, and convert at least one insight into a product change. Day four, ship that change and set up instrumentation that will show movement within seven days. Day five, record the one-minute founder video single take, founders speaking to camera, no script, the same one-liner at the top. Day six, record a sub-minute walkthrough that reaches the “aha” fast; narrate it like the user narrating their own clicks. Day seven, rewrite your application with these artifacts open on your screen so every answer stays grounded in reality.
As you refine, keep a few calibrators in mind. If a sentence contains more adjectives than numbers, it’s probably weaker than you think. If your walkthrough takes longer than a minute to reach value, the first-run experience likely needs simplification. If your “market” answer starts at billions instead of buyers, zoom in. If your “competition” answer dunks more than it measures, add a sober line about where rivals are strong, then pivot to the concrete steps you’re taking. And if your “risk” answer hems and haws, rewrite it until it sounds like a builder who knows what to try next.
The One-Minute Video and the Ten-Minute Interview
Treat the video as a clarity test. Look straight into the camera and say who you are, what you’re building, and why now. Speak like you talk to users. Notes are fine; scripts usually make you sound less confident. If the application allows a separate demo link, keep it to a clean, single-take path that reaches the “aha” quickly, no music, no overlays, just the job getting done with less pain.
Treat the interview as a high-bandwidth product meeting. The rhythm that works is simple: answer in one sentence, add one number, and, if useful, say what you’ll do next. If you don’t know, say how you’ll find out this week. Keep your language plain, your numbers exact, and your tone calm. Momentum between application and interview matters more than most founders expect, so behave as if the batch already started: ship, measure, and bring the single most important movement with you.
To get a sense of what past successful applicants have done, here are a few example videos from founders who went on to build consequential companies:
- DoorDash — YC application intro video (S13):
- Zenefits — YC application intro video (W13):
- Campus Job / WayUp — YC application intro video (W15):
Study them not to copy their style, but to notice what they share: clarity, brevity, and a direct explanation of who they are, what they’re building, and why now.
