General Partner at Y Combinator
Check size: YC's live standard deal is $500K for every accepted company: $125K on a post-money SAFE for 7% plus $375K on an uncapped MFN SAFE, with a future participation right. This is YC's program deal, not Brad's personal check, and founders should read the current official terms before applying.
Brad helps very early founders move from idea to a launched product users want, then build the fundraising, hiring and customer-development habits needed to survive. His Perfect Audience background and YC teaching focus point to practical evaluation of distribution, ideal customer, conversion to paid use, capital efficiency and whether a founding team learns quickly enough to find product-market fit.
Apply through YC's official application. Be concise: founders and ownership, what you build, demo, specific users and problem, why now, what is technically or behaviorally new, usage and retention, revenue, how users find you, competition, founder insight and why this team. Show what changed through direct user contact and what you can ship next.
Fast-moving founders, a concrete user problem, evidence of talking to users, a simple product that can launch quickly, resourcefulness, clear founder commitment, rapid learning, strong co-founder relationships and a plausible path to users before a large team or budget is required.
Brad's YC content warns against delaying launch, wasting money, premature hiring, vague customer definitions and being discouraged by investor rejection. YC has no published Brad-specific exhaustive pass list; weak fit also includes teams seeking only capital without the batch process or unwilling to engage deeply in office hours.
Ship the smallest credible product, observe real use, talk to users, prioritize the strongest signal and repeat quickly.
Name the first narrow customer, urgent problem, buying trigger, user, buyer, budget and acquisition channel.
Prepare metrics and story, build a targeted pipeline, cluster meetings, track objections and keep company progress moving during the raise.
Delay hiring and large fixed costs until founders know which product and distribution work must actually scale.
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