YC Interview Questions 2025 – 60+ Real Q&A + Prep Tips
By Adam petty
YC Interview Questions 2025: The Ultimate Founders’ Guide (With Sample Answers & Remote Tips)
In 2025 the YC interview is still ten minutes, still brutal, and still the fastest way to raise a $500 k SAFE.
What has changed? Remote interviews are the default, partners expect deeper Figma prototypes, and “AI” is no longer a buzz-word—it’s a table-stakes explanation. Below you’ll find 60+ yc interview questions 2025 actually asked this batch, word-for-word answers the partners loved, and a checklist you can screenshot 30 minutes before the call.
Contents:
What the YC Interview Actually Is in 2025
YC short-listed <2 % of the 25 k Winter-25 applications. If you’re reading this, congratulations—you’re already in the top decile. The interview is still:
- 10 minutes (Zoom or in-person at Pioneer Court, SF)
- 2–4 partners (usually one founder-heavy, one market-heavy)
- Rapid-fire (expect 20–30 questions)
What’s new:
- Remote-first: Bring a rock-solid internet connection; partners mute you if your audio drops.
- Live demo pressure: They’ll ask you to screen-share Figma, a Loom, or even a localhost.
- AI skepticism: If you say “we use GPT-4,” be ready for the immediate follow-up “so does everyone—why you?”
External resource: Y Combinator’s own 2025 interview prep page
The 7 Categories of YC Interview Questions 2025
We scraped 200 post-interview recaps on Reddit, Discord, and private founder Slacks to surface the exact phrasing partners used this year. Below each question you’ll see:
- Why they ask
- A 2-sentence sample answer (real founders gave us permission)
- Pro tip
1. The One-Sentence Question (They always open with it)
“Explain what your company does in one sentence.”
- Why: filters out founders who can’t simplify.
- Sample: “We’re the Stripe for carbon accounting—one API call turns any transaction into an auditable emissions report.”
- Pro tip: Use the “X for Y” template only when Y is instantly understood. “Uber for X” is now cliché.
2. Team & Origin Story
✅ “How did you two meet?”
✅ “Who writes code and who sells?”
✅ “What’s the biggest fight you’ve had in the last month?”
Sample answer (from a Winter-25 AdTech admit):
“We met in a Berkeley AI research lab. I (CTO) built the model that now underpins our ad-targeting; my co-founder (CEO) sold $1.2 M of ad inventory at her last agency. Last fight? Whether to pre-train or fine-tune—resolved by running a $500 Twitter ads A/B test; fine-tune won.”
Pro tip: End every team question with irrefutable proof of complementary skills.
External link: Harvard study on co-founder conflict
3. Problem & Market
✅ “How painful is this really?”
✅ “Who else tried and failed?”
✅ “What changed in the last 12 months that makes this possible now?”
Sample answer (FinTech):
“Pain? The average CFO spends 22 hours a month on expense reconciliation—our wait-list survey of 120 finance leads rated the pain 9/10. Concur and Expensify tried but never cracked multi-entity startups because they’re built on legacy databases. What changed? Real-time bank APIs (Plaid 4.0) now give us sub-second transaction data.”
Pro tip: Always quantify pain with hours or dollars; partners love hard numbers.
4. Traction & Metrics
✅ “What’s your weekly growth rate?”
✅ “How many paid pilots?”
✅ “What’s churn?”
Sample answer (SaaS):
“We’re at $6 k MRR, growing 18 % week-over-week for the last 6 weeks. Churn is 2 % monthly. We moved from free beta to paid 4 weeks ago and converted 62 % of users—proof the pain > price.”
Pro tip: If you’re pre-revenue, lead with wait-list signups or LOIs.
5. Product Demo (Remote-Specific)
“Can you screen-share the product right now?”
- Why: they want to see if it actually works.
- Script:
- Share tab with pre-loaded dummy data.
- Narrate user outcome, not features.
- End with live metric: “This dashboard saved our beta user $42 k last quarter—see the red line?”
Pro tip: Have a second co-founder ready to take over if your Wi-Fi hiccups.
6. Competitive Moat
✅ “What stops Google from building this?”
✅ “How defensible is your dataset?”
Sample answer (AI infra):
“Google could build it, but we’ve ingested 4 TB of anonymized call-center audio—data Google doesn’t have because big tech can’t legally touch most of it under GDPR. Training on this gives us a 23 % lower word-error-rate than Whisper-large.”
Pro tip: Frame moat as data network effects or regulatory capture, not patents.
External link: Sequoia on data moats
7. Business Model & Pricing
✅ “Why not charge 10× more?”
✅ “What happens if CAC doubles next quarter?”
Sample answer (Marketplace):
“We’re starting at 5 % take rate to onboard supply faster, but cohort analysis shows we can move to 8 % after Month 3 without churn spike—see this graph? If CAC doubles we still hit payback < 4 months because LTV is $7 k thanks to annual contracts.”
Pro tip: Reference the YC pricing talk: “We followed YC’s 10× value rule—our $200 / mo plan saves the average user $2 k in wasted ad spend.”
Full pricing workshop: Startup pricing 101 – YC Library
Remote Interview Hacks for 2025
✅ Hard-wired ethernet > Wi-Fi – upload speed ≥ 25 Mbps.
✅ Split-screen Google Doc – co-founder silently drops answers in real time.
✅ Pre-loaded browser tabs – product demo, cohort chart, user testimonials.
✅ Virtual background – branded slide with logo + one-sentence pitch.
The 30-Minute Pre-Interview Checklist
✅ One-sentence pitch memorized (say it to your dog).
✅ Screenshot of yesterday’s growth chart saved to desktop.
✅ Co-founder roles crystal clear (who answers what).
✅ Glass of water on left (so you can still gesture).
✅ Browser bookmarks bar hidden (no NSFW Reddit tabs).
✅ Flowjam video queued in another tab—if partners ask for a polished pitch, you’ll share a 60-second launch video that already raised $1 M in pre-seed. Order yours in 48 h here..
Industry-Specific Curveballs 2025
AI / LLM Startups
- “How much does a single query cost you at GPT-4-turbo pricing?”
- “What’s your hallucination mitigation strategy?”
Answer template: “We cache semantic embeddings so 72 % of requests hit our own model—cost per query drops to 0.2 ¢ and hallucinations fall below 0.5 %.”
Climate Tech
- “Is your carbon credit methodology third-party audited?”
- “What’s the payback period for buyers?”
Answer template: “Our credits are Gold Standard audited—buyers break even in 14 months via avoided EU carbon taxes.”
Consumer Social
- “How do you avoid the Myspace cliff?”
- “What’s your magic 7-day retention?”
Answer template: “We hit 38 % D7 retention by forcing collaborative posts—users invite teammates, creating multi-player lock-in.”
Common Mistakes That Still Kill Interviews in 2025
- Reciting a 60-second monologue – keep answers < 15 seconds, let them dig.
- Claiming “no competition” – shows naïveté.
- Hiding co-founder equity splits – YC will ask; 50/50 or 51/49 is fine, 70/30 without vesting is a red flag.
- Over-polished slides – they prefer raw localhost to perfect Figma.
- Ignoring the “Why now?” – macro tail-wins must be explicit (e.g., new regulation, API cost drop).
Last-Minute Rapid-Fire Practice (Set a 60-second timer)
Partner: “Convince me this isn’t a feature.”
You: “We started as a feature—then 3 Fortune 500s asked for enterprise SSO and a year-long contract. Feature → platform.”
Partner: “What’s the worst-case scenario in 6 months?”
You: “We discover our dataset bias tanks accuracy below 90 %—we’ve budgeted 6 weeks to re-label 50 k samples, worst-case we pivot to synthetic data.”
Key Takeaways (Screenshot This)
- YC partners decide in the first 90 seconds—start with momentum metrics.
- Every answer should hit pain, traction, team.
- Remote interviews reward speed—have tabs, numbers, and video links ready.
If you’re still polishing your deck at 2 a.m., stop and book a Flowjam sprint—a 60-second launch video buys you more attention than 60 slides.
