Y Combinator Startup Podcast
00:27:06 · Diana
[00:27:06] S1: I think this is actually gonna be even bigger in robotics. I mean, this is a hypothesis not proven yet. But robotic foundation models and robotics, I think, have a very different characteristics versus LLMs. LLM is... The whole thing is you model reality as language. And for robotics, you model reality in the physical three d space, which has way more degrees of freedom. And perhaps in order to get robots to work in a specific vertical, like, let's say, robots that do operations in data centers. I have this company called Boost Robotic that build robots for data centers, like, doing the cabling. It is possible for these robots to work. It is... It's better to get a model that's fine tuned and trained on custom data that just works in that environment. Because the the thing that's also challenging for robotics, they need to be in real time and respond very quickly to to the stimuli and have an action plan, which is different than LMs. LMs, you can have this this feature where you can just let it go and come back. But for robotics, you can't be... Because if if... I don't know. Let's say you connect that cable to to data center, and then someone comes in and, like, knocks the robot out, and things could get connected to the wrong plug, let's say.
00:28:17 · Jared Friedman, Diana
[00:28:17] S2: Yeah. My understanding is that all the YC companies that are using physical intelligence as models to deploy robotics, they're all fine tuning the PIE models. I don't think any of them are able to use the PIE models out of the box. Even though it's a great, like, starting point, you have to actually fine tune it for, like, your specific case, like, data center cables in order for it to work. [00:28:34] S1: Mhmm. You work with this company, Ultra. Right? [00:28:36] S2: Yeah. They start with the Pie model, but then they have, like, thousands of hours of footage of, like, putting things in boxes that makes it really good at putting things in boxes.
00:28:36 · Jared Friedman, Garry Tan, Diana
[00:28:36] S2: Yeah. They start with the Pie model, but then they have, like, thousands of hours of footage of, like, putting things in boxes that makes it really good at putting things in boxes. [00:28:44] S0: I've heard the argument basically that, you know, you could look at ClaudeCode, like ClaudeCode can use its its code transcripts to figure out who the top coders are, and you can take that and turn it around and, you know, basically train the next coding model to be even better. If you happen to own TikTok, you happen to have all of the data on what people watch and click on and what's compelling, and you can use that to make much more compelling videos in Seedance. So, you know, that's already been happening. I just, you know, I think that that that trend is gonna continue in a fairly spectacular way from here. So one of the things that we've been noticing, I think all of us have, is that frankly, some of the most powerful and badass founders that we've been seeing lately, they're... Might be in their late thirties, forties, even fifties. I mean, there's a sort of resurgence of the experienced founder. A lot of people seem to say that they wanna be YC for solo founders, but it turns out YC is the YC for solo founders. Diana, you have a few stats that you found surprising. [00:29:49] S1: One of the shocking stats from analyzing the septic companies from a year ago, we used to only have about 5% of the companies accepted be solid founders, and now we're over 18, 19%, which is a huge... This is the highest spike that we've seen.
00:29:49 · Diana, Garry Tan, Harj Taggar
[00:29:49] S1: One of the shocking stats from analyzing the septic companies from a year ago, we used to only have about 5% of the companies accepted be solid founders, and now we're over 18, 19%, which is a huge... This is the highest spike that we've seen. [00:30:04] S0: Almost one fifth of the batch. So... And it seems like it's gonna keep going. You know, before, you had you had to have, like, you know, so many different skills. You had to be a great hustler. You know, you had to be able to explain, and, you know, we would say, like, they have to be good talkers. Right? Like, you need someone who can, you know, be a hot person. Someone who can actually come in and convince someone of something. And then if you paired that with someone who is a world class technologist, that's sort of the combo that is so ideal. And so classically, would need cofounders to do that. Like, you know, any... It... You didn't necessarily need one, but, like, it would increase your chances by so so much. And I feel like a lot of that is, like, changing to this degree. It's becoming such that, like, knowing what to prompt and knowing what to build is so much more difficult and valuable than just knowing, you know, the CTO being able to code the thing. [00:30:58] S3: I think what's going on is that we've always actually had hugely successful single founders. I think people don't realize this about YC. There's different sort of definitions of it, but for all intents and purposes, I'll put it with Instacart, Brian Armstrong with Coinbase, at least when the batch started, were single founders.
00:30:58 · Harj Taggar, Garry Tan
[00:30:58] S3: I think what's going on is that we've always actually had hugely successful single founders. I think people don't realize this about YC. There's different sort of definitions of it, but for all intents and purposes, I'll put it with Instacart, Brian Armstrong with Coinbase, at least when the batch started, were single founders. [00:31:15] S0: Yeah. Parker Conrad got into YC as a single founder, and then I interviewed Lax Shrini, who ended up being his CTO. [00:31:22] S3: The bar for being able to, like, have the idea, be able to sell it, and be able to build it all by yourself was just really, really high. [00:31:31] S0: And that's actually totally doable. [00:31:34] S3: Yeah. I think that's what's going on. In that case, like those three are just like incredibly exceptional people. And so there's just, like, very, very few people who are capable of that. And now you can actually, like, get going. And so I think you just don't have to be quite that, like, exceptional, at least on one of those dimensions, the building part, to be able to get going. [00:31:49] S0: But net net, it's still valuable to have cofounders. It's still a measure of, like, you know, if your cofounders are super elite, like, that means you're probably super elite, and it just increases the chance of success by a lot. And...
00:31:49 · Garry Tan, Harj Taggar, Jared Friedman
[00:31:49] S0: But net net, it's still valuable to have cofounders. It's still a measure of, like, you know, if your cofounders are super elite, like, that means you're probably super elite, and it just increases the chance of success by a lot. And... [00:32:01] S3: In in each of those cases, they did bring on cofounders. I think in each of those cases, you just get going and they got traction and they added on co founders sort of at a certain point. And so maybe like the equity ownership is different or maybe the dynamic is just slightly different to the traditional, hey, like you start out and like the two of you in a room and you're completely fifty fifty. I don't know if wanna say that stuff in, but... [00:32:24] S2: I don't have the stats, but I have definitely seen a greater trend towards that. People adding co founders later in the company life cycle after the thing has already, like, gotten off the ground. [00:32:33] S3: I I think that will be the trend. I think we'll see more single founders in the batch, which we're already seeing starting the batch. But at least with the things that succeed, I still expect that they're gonna be adding co founders as the company progresses. [00:32:46] S2: Garry, do you also wanna talk about the trend towards like more experienced people starting companies?