📖 10 startup cheat codes from the YC @ Harvard talk

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Last Friday, Y Combinator partners Jared Friedman (sold Scribd for $450M) and Ankit Gupta (exited a biotech startup) came to speak with us at Harvard.

It was easily one of the most insight-packed hours I’ve ever experienced. I’m excited to share some of the key takeaways with you.

While much of the advice was geared toward young software founders, many of the lessons apply to any startup founder.

1/ YC doesn't care about your ideas

Everyone obsesses over "the idea." YC doesn't. Many accepted founders had shit ideas.

What mattered? Execution.

Jared went to school with Zuckerberg. When Facebook first launched, the space was already pretty crowded. But Zuckberg and his crew went all in and executed like maniacs. That intensity is what turned it into something huge.

However, the startup idea can be used as one signal to evaluate the raw execution skill of the founder.

2/ Good Ideas are encountered, not found

The best founders aren't idea hunters. They're builders.

They build side projects for fun, with friends. Ideas pop out in the process.

If you're sitting around waiting for an idea to hit you or being super analytical about finding the best idea, you're probably doing it wrong.

3/ Right internship can give you the best startup idea

There’s definitely a hierarchy when it comes to internships that are best for discovering startup ideas.

Ideally, you want to be somewhere that exposes you to cutting-edge technologies and lets you spot problems that a lot of other companies face too.

Top tier: startups — you’re close to the action, working with frontier tech, and the pain points you uncover often reflect broader industry issues.

Second tier: big tech — you’ll learn strong systems and frameworks, and get access to advanced tools, but the problems you solve may be too specific to that company.

Third tier: research labs — great for pushing the edge of what’s possible, but often disconnected from real-world use cases and slower to translate into products.

Bottom tier: places like Bridgewater LOL... Jared and Ankit both interned there as software engineers in college and felt like they didn’t take much away from the experience.

4/ Priority #1 = find a cofounder, especially a technical one

Many YC startups have pivoted, especially ones built by young founders.

If you're almost guaranteed to pivot, what really matters is who you're pivoting with. Don't overthink complementary skills—just find someone who builds.

Some of YC's favorite teams are like identical twins: same background, same strengths, same late-night energy.

5/ Don't drop out of school for $xx MRR. Drop out if you can't not work on it

Some of the best dropout stories had nothing to do with market traction. They had everything to do with obsession and founder’s emotional state.

You drop out when school feels like a cage. Not because TechCrunch wrote about your side hustle or even reaching $10K MRR.

6/ Vibe coding is definitely the future

A quarter of the YC W25 startup batch have 95% of their codebases generated by AI. Counterintuitively, the most prolific vibe coders are actually the nerdiest programmers.

Tools like LLMs make engineers 10x faster. You should get on it.

7/ AI is not overhyped

Enterprises are buying AI products because they actually work. They’re actively searching for solutions, and AI is finally delivering. It’s turning what used to be “unsellable bits” into real, valuable products.

The sales cycle is also faster than ever. The value prop is often so obvious that many YC AI startups are closing six- and even seven-figure enterprise deals within weeks.

On top of that, AI has unlocked entirely new modalities that didn’t even exist two years ago: chat-based LLMs, voice interfaces, real-time internet browsing, deep research agents.

Think about how you can leverage these tools for your own niche. There’s never been a better time to build.

8/ Startups are a cheat code for life

You have two main paths in life:

A) Work a cushy job, climb the ladder, and retire in 40 years with a decent nest egg.
B) Grind for 5–8 years in your 20s on your startup—and give yourself a real shot at living like a king for the rest of your life.

Both are valid.
But let’s be honest: Option B is for the most hardcore people in our society. It’s not for everyone.

That said, the underrated part of building a startup early is this: you compress decades of experience into just a few years. You’ll come out smarter, sharper, and more capable than almost anyone you know.

9/ Your 20s are the best time to build

Corporate life can dull your creativity.

Jared mentioned that YC often has to help older founders unlearn habits picked up over decades in big companies, because those instincts don’t always serve you well when building something from scratch.

But don’t stress if you’re past that age. It’s never too late to build. The mindset is what matters.

10/ Skills don't matter. Learning ability does

The only real skill that matters is the ability to learn.

Even for deep tech.

The founder of Boom Supersonic? He was a PM at Groupon before building a company that’s literally trying to bring back supersonic jets.

How’d he do it?
He read books. Talked to people. Figured it out.

You can do the same.

Most skills can be learned in a month or two.
Some take longer (like, you know, building a jet).
But don’t let “I don’t know how” stop you.

You can just DO THINGS in life. That’s the whole point.

🎁 Bonus advice from the talk:

• Hard tech is under-built. Fewer people are working on it, which means more opportunities if you're willing to go deep.

• Execution is everything. At YC, the top founders in every batch aren’t smarter than the rest. They’re just a little better at everything they do (coding, marketing, sales, you name it).

• Don't force yourself to work on ‘good businesses’. Just build cool things. Fun things. The kind of stuff you wish existed.

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See you next week 🫡,

Leo

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