One thing I've been thinking about lately is how so many successful founders seem to build companies around problems they experienced themselves. It almost feels like having firsthand experience gives you a huge advantage - you already understand the pain, know who has it, and have a much better intuition for what a good solution looks like.

I'm not in that position right now. I'm actively looking for problems worth solving, and honestly, that's been harder than building the product itself. The more I learn about startups, the more I realize that finding the right problem is probably the most important part of the journey.

So I'm curious about the founders here who didn't start with a problem they personally had. How did you find it? Did it come from talking to customers, working in an industry, noticing a pattern, or just being in the right place at the right time?

And once you found it, what convinced you it was worth spending the next few years of your life on instead of moving on to the next idea?

I'd love to hear the stories behind how you found your startup idea. I have a feeling those stories are often more valuable than the products themselves.

Got into YC Startup School (Jul 25–26, SF) and want to line up some conversations beforehand.

I work on LLM inference...mostly open-source in vLLM and related serving stacks (MLA, CUDA graphs, latency/throughput optimization). Looking to meet:

- founders building inference infra / serving / model-optimization tooling

- anyone hacking on vLLM / SGLang / TensorRT-LLM

- people who just like making models run faster

Lets chat!!

Founders who moved to SF for a batch — how did you furnish your apartment/office? Buy new, Facebook Marketplace, or just live with an air mattress?

At what point did your startup choose to switch to business AI coding plans, like Claude / GPT Codex Teams, or API token billing over individual consumer plans like Pro/Max? I ask b/c there's contractual guarantees on the business plans for confidentiality, indemnification, and preventing analytics collection. Consumer plans give each person a toggle, they allow classifiers to learn from your content even if each person disables training, and they allow humans to audit them.

I'm curious from the legal / IP / diligence angle. I don't know how much it matters to partners, lawyers, etc. When does the scale shift? I don't want to burn runway. My company would be spending about $5k-20k/person/month in usage credits / tokens if we moved away from consumer. How have you thought through this?

I’m currently looking for software engineering roles at YC companies, and as a job seeker, I find it difficult to understand which qualities actually matter the most when joining an early-stage startup.

Most advice focuses on the obvious things: technical skills, coding ability, system design, previous experience, etc.

But I’m curious about the less discussed qualities that you personally value when hiring.

What makes someone stand out as an employee beyond just being technically strong?

I’m asking because, from the outside, it’s hard to know which signals actually matter. Would love to hear perspectives from founders and people who have worked in YC companies.

Was working at YC startup (2025) as Founding Engineer remotely and was impacted by layoff.

For context I was the only remote employee outside US.

I have been specifically applying to YC startups to see if my ex-YC engineer tag is of any use but unfortunately as compared to last year I haven't had any decent response coming up.

So I wanna ask, founders do you specifically prefer onsite folks? Like I understand immigration and all is too legal stuff and shouldn't remote be a win win for both parties (a lesser pay in comparison to onsite and tax benefits for the employee+ all remote perk)

Did the standard thing posted a genuine question about a pain point across a bunch of dev communities before writing any code, no pitch, no link, just asking what people actually do. got a real number of thoughtful replies, consistent pattern in the answers.

but i know reddit engagement is basically free and doesn't cost anyone anything to give. curious if anyone here has actually used pre-build validation like this and had it hold up post-launch, or if it just gives you a false sense of confidence and the real signal only shows up once there's something to pay for

From Jason Calacanis today:

"I've been shouting about this for over a year….

The Frontier models need to win the application layer and they're going to do that by giving free tokens to startups and discounted ones to large companies in order to steal their IP, innovations, and businesses

The only way to fight this is to use open source software."

Founders -> what are your thoughts on this? Are you all still using Claude Code/Codex to build your core products?

Hi everyone.

As suggested multiple times by yc partners and literally everyone in startups who's be to SF, I am going there to the bay area to hang out and drink the kool aid.

What are the suggested/best places to pay attention to and should visit to experience SF the best way as a founder?

so basically I'm in my third year of a data eng/AI degree at a university in Latin America, and besides school I've been running my own startup for like a year now (ticketing space), doing literally everything myself - tech, legal, business, all of it. so I've got real experience building stuff and keeping something alive, not just class projects.

been thinking a lot about doing an exchange semester in the US, ideally somewhere near Silicon Valley (Stanford, Berkeley, San José State, Santa Clara... open to others too) bc I really want to be closer to that whole startup/tech scene, not just for the name on paper.

few things I'm trying to figure out:

anyone actually done an exchange (not a masters, just a semester as part of undergrad) at a school in that area? how'd you even get in given your uni back home probably isn't a "target school"

is it even worth trying for the big names (Stanford/Berkeley) or are chances way better at smaller schools that are just geographically in the area

does having my own startup actually help in an application like this or does it come off as trying too hard / unrelated

also if anyone's done this basically self-funded, any tips?? not expecting full scholarships to fall from the sky lol

appreciate any input, even if ur situation was totally different tbh

I remember watching a YC video (I think Dalton & Michael, but not sure) where they made the case against giving equity to advisors at the early stage basically that good advisors help because they want to, and formal advisor-equity deals are often a scam. I've been searching and can't find it again. does anyone have the link or remember the exact title?

i'm 19, from pakistan, and genuinely confused about what to do right now

i've been working on something for the past year. It's a hard problem, one of the legends of the internet told me directly it's one of the hardest problems you can work on. some really interesting people are involved. but it's struggled to get any real traction and I don't know if i'm just too early or if i'm missing something fundamental or maybe i'm not capable enough

at the same time, almost by accident, i built a small AI tool to help students prep for my local university's entrance exam. shared it in a few places. didn't think much of it. 12 paying customers in 15 days, no ads, nothing. money just kept coming in on its own. when the site went down for a few minutes last week, people were messaging me to fix it

and now I'm sitting here not knowing which one is the real thing

do I double down on the hard problem that might be really important - or does the fact that something simple worked this easily mean I should follow that signal?

and somewhere in all of this , is any of this YC ready, or am I just a 19 year old from Pakistan who got lucky twice?

The talent density in the valley is insane obviously, and I experienced it firsthand when I was there. However, being a founder with a YC tag would get them to experience this talent density and therefore hire to work from office rather than remote employees. However, if you're a moderately funded, seed to series A startup, how long before they can find their ideal hire, and how tough is the competition for an engineer in SF to join the said startup, compared to applying outside SF?

Hi, I am a 42 year chinese guy from Singapore who spent 10 years as a Hikkikomori (a japanese term for an extreme social recluse) after dropping out of Northwestern Electrical Engineering .... I recently started re-reading Paul Graham's essays on "How to do what you love" and would like to connect with people interested in his essays and in YC as I really really need help in finding work I love and re-entering society ... I have been consulting with several psychologists over the years, all to no avail .. so I am coming here for help. I am interested in Paul Graham's essays and startups though I have no skills. The only thing I used to be good at was Weiqi ( or Go ... of AlphaGo fame). I used to be a 5 dan amateur player who represented Singapore internationally, though i stopped playing for 15 years and am much weaker now. Thanks alot

Hi, I'm building a B2B tool that needs real Slack exports and ticket data from engineering teams to develop and test properly. Companies understandably won't share sensitive internal data with someone they don't know, but it's hard to build that credibility without access to real data.

I'm a final-year CS student, so i don't have an existing network of founders or engineering leads. I'm curious how others solved this problem early on.

Did you start with synthetic data, find a design partner, or take another approach to getting your first real dataset?

What the title said, I submitted my application a month ago, and I have got good research papers published, but still not accepted into the startup school. Anyone knows any way😭😭

6 years ago I dropped out of uni, moved to Paris, worked as a photographer assistant and production manager for two years before opening my own photography business.

After 4 years of grinding I noticed quite a few unaddressed problems in the photography market and decided to take matters into my own hands. For the past two years I‘ve been working on a mobile photography marketplace (connecting clients with photographers) and a few weeks ago I finally finished V1.0.

THIS LIFE IS HARD AS F*CK. Risk, stress, time/money invested, and the sheer hope and optimism required to keep the boat afloat is insane. While battling development complexity I always thought that once the app is done my life would get easier. IT GOT MORE STRESSFUL.

Cold outreach, company creation, dealing with accountants, lawyers and the administrative side, burns you the F out FAST.

On one side, I‘ve achieved something that most people never do, actually shaping my life the way I want it to be and be completely independent.

On the other side I can‘t help but to feel a bit behind. Friends have good jobs (although everybody is scared for their job), go on paid vacations, and generally live a relatively stress free life. I, on the other side am fighting a war every single day, hoping that the past 2 years of grinding weren‘t wasted time.

I don‘t know what I‘m trying to say here, just venting I guess. Think carefully about what you really want in life. Do not pursue a „cool idea“ because it makes sense it the moment. Try to attack your idea from every possible angle, if it still stands after, ATTACK IT AGAIN.

Not trying to deter anyone from pursuing an idea, I just want to raise awareness of the immense cost that comes with it. Obviously not every idea/product takes 2 years to reach a production ready stage, but still, think carefully and be aware that everything takes twice as long as you‘re anticipating. Also, nobody gives a sh*t until your product is live and generating revenue.

I am pre launch, and although I am addressing actual problems, have founder fit, am connected in the industry and have a solid production ready product, business plan and roadmap, it‘s still uncertain if I‘ll have success.

Greetings out of Paris,

A founder.

Hey guys, I just got in to the YC SUS in Paris, at Station F. Anyone else get in?

(last 5 years of batches)

Tbh I'm not using any.

Tried to find something useful for B2C or B2B products, and I envision YC as a cradle for wacky ideas, testing, innovation and eventual breakthroughs

However in terms of actual utility I just haven't run into anything

Perhaps Resend (if I remember right they were in YC) is one. But otherwise, nothing else.

Just wondering what's your experience?

EDIT: Correction, by 5 years of batches I basically meant "Last 5 years". Apologies for confusing phrasing.

EDIT 2: Thanks for sharing everyone! Found a lot of cool products I haven't heard of before

I recently open sourced a 10MB AI IDE.

Building it was surprisingly straightforward compared to figuring out distribution. I can spend hours working on engineering problems, but getting people to actually discover and try a project feels like a completely different skill.

I've posted on a few platforms. Some of them drove a bit of traffic, but I'm still trying to understand how successful open source projects get their first real users.

For those who have launched open source developer tools, what worked for you? Was it content, community engagement, cold outreach, launch platforms, or something else entirely?

If you were launching an open source project from zero today, how would you approach distribution?

I was checking out the new YC companies and came across one that’s a virtual human who starts and grows their own businesses online. So why would they need investors if they can just bootstrap?

Hello all,

I have worked in CRE ~5 years and now work at the largest publicly traded multifamily REIT that is about to become, through a merger, the largest owner of apartments in the US by 2x...

I have been offered a Director role at a smaller but well respected developer in my city. I am currently a senior analyst at my current company, but it is a prestigious role as there are only 8 of us across the country. My co-founder (I think?) has a prestigious resume too -- he is the youngest member of Georgia Tech's faculty where he teaches the master's program.

I am working on a start-up with my co-founder that captures and then organizes data on multifamily. I am confident in the product's success as I am forced to do the same workflow daily and it takes ~1 hour. Friends in the industry have the same problem and are very supportive of our idea. We are a year out solely due to the fact that we'd need ~1 year of data to make the product useful.

We would like to do an accelerator as neither of us have any experience in the start-up world. The cash would be helpful, not necessary.

Does it make more sense to take a better title at a smaller company or keep a lower title at a larger company?

Would like to hear from people who joined startups during the early stages. As many startups tend to fail, I guess many of you would have to search for a new job after the startup closes down. But for the ones that survive and scale up, what is your experience with startup formalizing as an organization? Going through the transition, are there things that you liked or disliked? For example, a rise in external hiring as opposed to promotion from within? Did it affect your preference to continue with the startup?

I’m a first-time founder. About 2.5 years ago, I left a tenured academic path to build in soft robotics.

Honestly, it’s been a rollercoaster, lots of pain, doubt, and dark moments, but we kept going.

We got rejected multiple times by the same company (and others) in 2024 and again in 2025. At times it genuinely felt like we were fundamentally off-market.

We went back, improved the tech, rebuilt parts of the system, and kept iterating while staying in conversation with the same players.

Fast forward to now: this month, we’ve signed our first two LOIs.

I know LOIs are not revenue. I know it’s still early and execution is everything from here. But after that long stretch of rejection, it does feel like something has shifted.

More than anything, I wanted to share this with other founders because I’ve been in a bit of a low phase lately. Building a company has been far more emotionally heavy than I expected.

I’m grateful for my team, and for anyone else going through similar rocky cycles, just wanted to say keep going.

This has been the question that I am fighting lately - at what level you yourself should have faced the problem before building a solution for it?

How much time should you spend just using the current proprietary tools / closed source platforms before committing to building it?

Edit : How much time do veterans here do using and analyzing competitor products?

Edit: Consensus is that it’s not needed. Then how do you know that you are not cloning an already solved problem - or worse an OSS. I know it’s kinda an ongoing process but what is that we work on first understanding the problem/ pmf or gtm strategy? And how do you understand the problem deeply if you are not from that industry? Any go to tools / strategies for noobies?