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Year One: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Year One
Every billion-dollar YC company survived a brutal first year after Demo Day. Year One captures those twelve months as they happen, tracking one founder's make-or-break decision per episode: the pivot that saved the company, the co-founder fight that almost killed it, the fundraising round that closed at 2am on a Thursday. Two hosts (one former YC founder, one startup reporter) sit down with recent batch founders while the wounds are still fresh, then bring in YC partners to dissect what went right, what went wrong, and what the founder couldn't see from inside the fog. If you're an aspiring founder, an early startup employee, or an investor trying to understand why 90% of startups stall while a handful become Stripe or Airbnb, this is the show that replaces hindsight polish with the version founders tell each other at 1am on Bookface.
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- 5 days ago16 min
Two Founders, One Year Out: The Series A Cliff
Two YC founders are sitting on seed rounds sized for a market that no longer exists, and neither knows yet whether they'll clear the bar. One raised in Summer '25, the other in Winter '26, both roughly a year out from Demo Day with normal $3-4M rounds and no guarantee of what comes next. This episode of Year One tracks their live, unresolved odds against a Series A threshold that has roughly tripled since 2021, now demanding $2-5M in ARR and 2-3x growth just to get a meeting. A YC partner weighs in with a cross-portfolio view spanning hundreds of startups and a $15.5M median Series A, offering a rare look at what actually separates the fifteen to twenty percent who graduate from the rest. Anyone weighing whether to grind or pivot in their own post-seed year will recognize exactly what's at stake here.
- 1 weeks ago17 min
Nadia: Walking Into the Room After the $200M Number
Nadia walked into YC's F26 kickoff carrying the shadow of a number nobody in the room would say out loud: the $200 million valuation her company, Nine Mothers, hit as an eight-month-old startup in the S26 batch. Every founder in the new class had done the math, and Year One hosts Grant and Miles are back to find out what happens when an entire incoming cohort gets recalibrated by one outlier deal before they've even shipped a product. This episode follows the three-day, in-person F26 kickoff in San Francisco, from the roughly 400 founders and 200 companies sorted into nine-person house groups to the moment a YC partner names the Nine Mothers print directly and coaches founders to price on fundamentals, not headlines. Grant and Miles trace how the S26 story spread through alumni nights and Bookface, why the July 27 application deadline mattered, and what December 2, 2026 now means as F26's own Demo Day countdown begins. Anyone building through their first YC batch, or just trying to ignore a number that won't stop haunting the room, will want this one.
- 2 weeks ago16 min
Greypoint: Building Hardware in an AI Batch
Four founders, one CNC machine, and a pitch that stopped a room full of investors cold: Greypoint Industries is building drone technology to compete with defense primes that have decades of institutional weight behind them. Jordan Khoo left General Dynamics to build LEGION, and the stakes are as much personal as strategic, invoking Canada's Avro Arrow cancellation as the mission he refuses to repeat. On this episode of Year One, Miles and Grant dig into why YC's Summer 2026 batch shifted so heavily toward industrials and hardware, what a signed Canadian government contract and armed forces demo actually prove about traction, and why hardware founders accept slower fundraising clocks and zero SaaS margins as the cost of building something real. They also unpack whether Greypoint's early buzz is signal or story. Essential listening for anyone weighing a YC application in hard tech, or founders wondering if physical products can still win in an AI-obsessed funding climate.
- 3 weeks ago16 min
9 Mothers: The $200M That Warped the Batch
Days before Demo Day, a $200 million valuation for an unnamed S26 startup lands in a YC founder group chat and won't stop spreading. On this episode of Year One, Miles and Grant trace how that single number rewrites every other founder's negotiation in the batch, then reveal the company behind it: 9 Mothers, a counter-drone defense startup out of Austin, and the Palmer Luckey and Garry Tan context (via TBPN) that fueled the hype. They dig into Rebel Fund's data showing over a third of the W26 batch scored in YC's top tier, then pressure-test what that grade actually predicts. Michael Seibel's own 2007 Justin.tv numbers get pulled in as a reality check against today's inflated benchmarks. This one's especially useful for founders mid-fundraise who keep comparing their term sheet to someone else's headline, and for anyone trying to separate real signal from Demo Day noise.
- Sep 1, 202617 min
Demo Day+72: How S26 Term Sheets Get Priced
The applause hasn't even faded and the phones are already lighting up. This episode of Year One picks up in the 72 hours after S26's Demo Day, when term sheets start arriving with clocks attached and top companies field hundreds of offers before the weekend is over. The stakes are immediate: sign fast on incomplete information, or risk losing a hot deal while trying to compare offers against a market that suddenly looks like 2021 again. We break down why default SAFE caps have jumped from $2M-on-$20M to $4M-on-$40M in three years, what YC's own reasoning for same-day asks actually is, and how a generous-looking cap can quietly cost a founder more equity down the road. We also walk through a simple test for telling real investor conviction from manufactured urgency before the inbox even fills up. Essential listening for founders staring down their own term sheet clock, or anyone trying to understand how Demo Day money actually moves.
- Aug 25, 202615 min
Nadia: The Verdict Arrives
Nadia has just opened the YC decision email she has been waiting on for weeks, and in this episode you hear the exact moment she finds out if her company’s next year is completely rewritten. The stakes are simple and huge: either she’s in and locked into a YC batch, or she has to rebuild the plan she’s been working toward all summer. You have to hear this one because Nadia reads the verdict out loud, processes it in real time, and immediately loops in her cofounder before she even lets herself react. From there, Miles and Grant bring the YC partner back on mic to break down what this outcome structurally changes for her next 90 days, and what the alternate path would have looked like if the answer had been no. Together they unpack what “useful feedback” really means, what founders who don’t get in actually do next, and how persistence shows up beyond the polished success stories, all through the lens of Year One decisions that compound. Published August 25, 2026, this episode is especially relevant if you’re anywhere near hitting submit on your own YC application.
- Aug 18, 202610 min
Nadia: The Ten Days Before August 28
Ten days before Y Combinator's August 28 decision date, founder Nadia is stuck in the kind of limbo that quietly reshapes how she runs her company. Her Fall 2026 seed round may hinge on a single letter, and on this episode of Year One, hosts Grant and Miles push past the surface to find out if that wait is a real bet or a story she's telling herself. Nadia walks through exactly what she built and cut in her last four weeks, and Grant catches her rounding up a revenue number in a moment that says more than the numbers themselves — raising the question of whether her roadmap was built for customers or for three YC partners in a room. The conversation doesn't stop at acceptance odds; Grant runs the real math on rejection, the investor process she hasn't started, and what a YC partner says separates founders who use uncertainty well from those who freeze in it. Essential listening for any founder currently staring down their own countdown.
- Aug 11, 202612 min
Nadia: What the Yes or No Actually Bought Her
Nadia read the email four times and still couldn't parse it. An ambiguous status update from Y Combinator landed Tuesday night, and what followed was ninety seconds of dead air before she said a word. On this episode of Year One, hosts Miles and Grant trace the exact month leading up to her August 28th decision date: the pilot customer she chased, the six-week feature she killed after it went unused, the ops hire she postponed to protect runway, and the parallel fundraise she quietly shut down without telling half her team. Grant presses on what Nadia won't say directly, including a co-founder question she deflects twice, while Miles brings in YC's own guidance on how partners read the waiting period as evidence, not dead time. They also break down what actually changes operationally the morning a founder gets a yes versus a no. This one's especially relevant if you're mid-application, mid-wait, or making decisions right now that assume an outcome you don't actually control yet.
About Year One
Every billion-dollar YC company survived a brutal first year after Demo Day. Year One captures those twelve months as they happen, tracking one founder's make-or-break decision per episode: the pivot that saved the company, the co-founder fight that almost killed it, the fundraising round that closed at 2am on a Thursday. Two hosts (one former YC founder, one startup reporter) sit down with recent batch founders while the wounds are still fresh, then bring in YC partners to dissect what went right, what went wrong, and what the founder couldn't see from inside the fog. If you're an aspiring founder, an early startup employee, or an investor trying to understand why 90% of startups stall while a handful become Stripe or Airbnb, this is the show that replaces hindsight polish with the version founders tell each other at 1am on Bookface.
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