Big Changes at Y Combinator? An Inside Look with S22 Founders

Foreign, expecting a full online kind of experience, and instead we got this.

You mean the first annual Sonoma badge kickoff? I love just meeting everyone at the start of the batch, surrounded by really smart people from all over the world. Before I was in YC, I didn't feel like I had that many founder friends, and so it's just been incredible to have so many other people who are at a very similar point in their lives. So many different founders from different areas that I did not think that YC companies were founded.

It was incredible. We're building general autonomy software for industrial vehicles. Lion Pose is making clinical skin care products for people of color. Numi Foods is the Impossible foods for seafood. We're building robotic mushroom bombs. We are making it extremely easy to get great OB GYN care in person and over telehealth. We've developed the world's first biodegradable and carbon-neutral polyester alternative engineered from food waste. Earhart is building airplanes that anyone can fly.

Now Imagine is a scalable cloud-native alternative to Get Garage, which is the wholesale auto parts distributor in Africa. We're making the next Google. Seeing so many things has come by pushing new mobile. I think only YC can provide you with this. It was just like the perfect way to start relationships in a range.

I came back from that retreat and I said like this is basically most of the value that I wanted out of YC already. My favorite parts of that were hearing the partners' founding stories and their backgrounds, and actually, you know, being pretty inspired by them. Then the rest of the batch, you can really like be like, wow, this advice is coming from a real source of truth and experience.

Actually, work together with the partners much more than I ever thought, and they've built incredible companies themselves. They have proven that they know how to scale a business, and they take time just for you. I think it's obviously great that we have the guidance from our partners, but I think even just coming here to Spark Social and talking to other people in our batch on a weekly basis, as we've been going through it, getting feedback and support, and people checking in has been, I think, invaluable.

It had never even crossed my mind that that would be a benefit of YC. I made so many great friends, and they helped me connect with customers. We help each other, you know, getting through that was like watching that. Meeting people in person, at least at the retreat, at these in-person events, it was really, really helpful for us.

You come in and you realize like there's so much to learn. It's really intense, and your company is in much better shape after these three months. It's exceeded our expectations by far. Already, it's literally life-changing and transformational because, you know, we thought one thing going into the batch, and now we think something completely differently and are really excited about our future and the business of the future as well.

I definitely say, like, if you're thinking about doing it, just do it, and it might change your life. It changed our lives, so you should do it. The question should more be why not apply to us? Why didn't we do it sooner? Why didn't we do it sooner?

Foreign. [Music]