YC Application Tips 2025 | Get Into Y Combinator (Proven Guide)
By Adam petty
YC Application Tips 2025: The Ultimate, No-BS Guide to Getting Into Y Combinator
If you’re reading this, you’re probably hovering over the “Apply” button on the YC website, wondering if your idea is good enough, your team cool enough, or your traction impressive enough. Spoiler: it’s less about being perfect and more about telling a brutally honest, compelling story. Below is the most up-to-date collection of YC application tips for 2025, straight from founders who got the “Yes” email last batch (and the partners who wrote it).
Table of Contents
- Why the 2025 YC Batch Is Different
- 2025 YC Application Timeline & Deadlines
- Application Deep-Dive: How to Nail Every Section
- Team
- Idea
- Progress & Traction
- The 1-Minute Video
- New-for-2025 Application Fields (and How to Handle Them)
- 11 Common Mistakes That Auto-Reject 80 % of Apps
- Mini-Case Studies: 3 Recent Founders Who Got In
- Pre-Submission Checklist ✅
- FAQs (With Schema Markup)
- Final Pep Talk & External Resources
Why the 2025 YC Batch Is Different
Y Combinator has always evolved faster than most startups, but the 2024-2025 cycle introduced three seismic shifts:
AI-native cohorts: Roughly 40 % of W24 companies were AI-first. If you’re building with LLMs, you’ll swim in a bigger pool—and face higher expectations for moats (source).
Rolling interviews: YC now releases interview invites in weekly waves instead of one big dump. Translation: apply early; you can get a response in 10 days rather than 10 weeks.
Longer short-answer boxes: The old 120-character limit is now 200 characters. That’s room for one extra punchy sentence—use it.
2025 YC Application Timeline & Deadlines
The Y Combinator application for 2025 opens on January 2, 2025 for all decision tracks. For the Early Decision track, the final deadline is February 15, 2025, with interview invites rolling out from January 20 and interviews scheduled between February 3–14. The Standard Deadline closes on March 12, 2025, with invites sent from February 25 and interviews held from March 10–28. For the Late Decision*, applications are due by April 9, 2025, interview invites start from April 1, and interviews take place between April 7–18. Regardless of the decision track, the batch officially begins on April 28, 2025.
Application Deep-Dive
1. Team (YC’s #1 Filter)
YC partners repeat this like a mantra: “We fund teams, not ideas.” Here’s how to prove you’re the Avengers, not a random meet-up group.
✅ Put the why-us in the first sentence
Instead of:
“Jane (CEO) and I studied CS at MIT.”
Try:
“We’ve built and scaled two developer tools together—one got acquired by GitHub in 2023.”
✅ Show complementary superpowers
List the decision-maker for product, growth, and tech. If you’re solo founder, address it head-on:
“Solo for now; my last co-founder left amicably in January. I’ve since recruited a part-time CTO (ex-Stripe) who’ll join full-time after funding.”
✅ Link the receipts
Add short links (LinkedIn, GitHub, tiny demo) right in the text. Partners click.
2. Idea
YC no longer asks “How will you make money?” in the first section; they ask “Who desperately needs this?”
✅ State the problem in one visceral sentence
“Security analysts still triage 1,000 daily alerts with regex—burnout is at 78 %.”
✅ Anchor to a growing wave
Reference a stat from Gartner 2025 or Statista to show the market isn’t a mirage.
✅ Kill the “Uber-for-X” cliché
If you must use an analogy, twist it:
“We’re Cloudflare for LLM prompts—protecting apps from malicious prompts at the edge.”
3. Progress & Traction
The bar keeps rising. In 2025, “MVP in private beta” is table stakes.
✅ Use the “3-number rule”
Pick the three numbers that prove velocity:
- Weekly active users (WAU)
- MoM growth %
- Paying customers or LOIs
Example:
“120 WAU, 42 % MoM growth, 6 paid pilots at $3k each.”
✅ Screenshot > adjectives
Upload a tiny, unlisted Loom walkthrough (30 sec) and link it. Video > superlatives.
4. The 1-Minute Video
YC’s own video guidelines haven’t changed since 2010—because they work.
✅ Hook in 3 seconds
Open with the problem. Example:
“Every e-commerce store loses 28 % of revenue to abandoned carts. We fix that with a one-line JS snippet.”
✅ Two faces max
If you’re three co-founders, pick two; shaky phone swaps scream “unprepared.”
✅ End with momentum
Finish with:
“We’re growing 40 % month-over-month and need YC to scale infra before Black Friday.”
Need a pro polish? Flowjam turns raw footage into YC-ready videos in under a week—unlimited revisions included.
New-for-2025 Application Fields
- AI Safety Disclosure – 150 characters. If you use open-source models, say “We fine-tune Llama-3 on proprietary data; no user PII leaves VPC.”
- Climate Impact Tag – Optional, but if you save energy, quantify it: “Cuts GPU energy 37 % via dynamic quantization.”
- Referral Code – Plug your YC alumni friend here; it’s not cheating, it’s networking.
11 Common Mistakes That Auto-Reject 80 % of Apps
- ✅ Using the royal “we” when you’re still a solo founder.
- ✅ Claiming $10 B TAM without a source.
- ✅ Hiding failed pivots—own them; pivots show grit.
- ✅ Linking a 30-slide deck instead of a 1-page traction PDF.
- ✅ Writing in jargon (“decentralized serverless orchestration layer”).
- ✅ Ignoring competitors: “No one does this” = naïve.
- ✅ Video shot in a café (echo = death).
- ✅ Forgetting to mention why now (regulation, tech inflection, etc.).
- ✅ Saying “we’ll hire a sales team after YC” with zero GTM experiments.
- ✅ Listing advisors who haven’t committed.
- ✅ Typos in the first 50 characters—seriously.
Mini-Case Studies: 3 Recent Founders Who Got In
1. Maya & Luis – W24 – AI Audio Tool
- Traction: 2,300 wait-list signups from a single Product Hunt launch.
- Video: Filmed in their garage with a $30 mic, but crisp audio demo.
- Key Tip: They led with weekly churn rate (1.8 %) instead of user count.
2. Arjun – S24 – Carbon Accounting API
- Pivot Story: Started as a B2C carbon footprint tracker, pivoted after 6 mos.
- Differentiator: Shared an LOI from a $2 B logistics company.
3. Tasha – W24 – SMB Hiring SaaS
- Solo Founder: Addressed it in line 1; showed her last startup’s acquisition.
- Growth Hack: Cold-DM’d 200 Shopify merchants, converted 18 to paid.
Pre-Submission Checklist ✅
- [ ] Application saved in Google Docs with version history
- [ ] Answers read out loud; no tongue-twisters
- [ ] 1-min video < 30 MB, uploaded to unlisted YouTube
- [ ] Links tested on mobile (50 % of partners read on phone)
- [ ] Referral code triple-checked (no typos in alumni email)
- [ ] PDF traction doc compressed < 1 MB
- [ ] Submitted before 11 pm PT—servers slow at midnight
FAQs (FAQPage Schema)
Q1: Can I apply again if I was rejected last batch?
A: Yes. YC loves persistence; ~30 % of S24 had applied before. Highlight what changed.
Q2: Do I need a technical co-founder to get in?
A: Not if you can ship. Solo non-technical founders in S24 proved they could hire contractors and still hit 30 % MoM growth.
Q3: How polished should the demo be?
A: “Working > pretty.” A Figma prototype is fine for hardware; software should be live.
Q4: Are SAFE notes negotiable?
A: No. YC uses a standard $500 k SAFE with no cap—take it or leave it. Detailshere.
Final Pep Talk & External Resources
Look, the application is only eight short answers and a 60-second video. It’s not a PhD thesis—it’s a trailer for the movie you’re about to shoot. Ship it before you’re ready; YC partners are allergic to perfectionism.
Need a launch video that screams “fund us”? Flowjam has helped 100+ YC companies turn raw screen recordings into investor-ready stories in under 7 days—unlimited revisions until Demo Day.
Bookmark these before you hit submit:
Now go smash that “Submit” button. We’ll see you at Tuesday dinners.
Written by the Flowjam team—makers of launch videos for YC startups. If this guide helped you, pay it forward: tweet your favorite tip and tag @flowjam.
