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Y Combinator

A guide to the best B2B podcast coverage of Y Combinator - the shows and 33 episodes that go deepest, ranked by substance, not downloads.

Y Combinator has become a launching pad for founders across sectors - from AI companions and voice AI startups reaching Series A, to hard tech and security-focused companies scaling to enterprise customers. These episodes feature YC alumni and investors backing them, exploring the strategic decisions founders face when leaving established roles, the mistakes that derail growth, and how YC-backed companies are expanding beyond Silicon Valley to dominate verticals in the US, Europe, and beyond.

Best shows on Y Combinator

Best episodes on Y Combinator

  1. He hit $1M ARR by sending 500,000 cold emails - then raised a $25M Series A in 6 days. | Mark Hughes, Co-Founder of Solidroad

    A Product Market Fit Show · 2026-06-01

    88 / 100

    …Which was a Y Combinator company in summer 2019, and I had my first business.…

  2. Paul Graham On Startups, Ambition, and Great Founders

    Y Combinator Startup Podcast · 2026-09-05

    88 / 100

    …peaker B: Well, um, a lot of the language of Y combinator is Maya and Jessica's private language.…

  3. Rebuilding Trust Through Consumer Credit in Venezuela | Pedro Vallenilla, CEO & Co Founder of Cashea

    "Cut The Check" with Mack Meyer · 2025-07-22

    81 / 100

    …And after that, a company called Yummy that went through Y Combinator launched this ride hailing and raised money to launch this startup.…

  4. SECURE& | “75% of Security Reviews Aren’t Code” with Emily Choi-Greene | S5 Ep5

    The Start and Scale Podcast · 2026-06-19

    79 / 100

    …And we applied to Y Combinator about two years ago.…

  5. How Supabase became the essential infrastructure for the AI era | Paul Copplestone (Co-founder, CEO)

    In Depth · 2026-06-25

    78 / 100

    …I thought at the time, again, to de risk things, I thought I'm going to build a, uh, the most Y Combinator friendly team and apply for YC and that will help from a devtool point of view.…

  6. E 770 - Unicorn Atlas #5: HappyRobot's $1.2B Address Gap

    Deep Tech Germany · 2026-08-25

    78 / 100

    …It was Likely Y Combinator, because the pivot happened inside the Y Combinator batch.…

  7. How Losing Her Best Friend Led Eugenia Kuyda to Build the World's First AI Companion

    Ventures from The Valley · 2026-06-03

    76 / 100

    …We got into Y Combinator, moved to San Francisco, raised some money, and then later that year, my best friend passed away.…

  8. ex-WHOOP PM, YC Founder Ben Katz: AI-Native Sports Training for Everyday Athletes & Why Coding Agents Are the New 10x Workforce

    Masters of Automation · 2026-03-30

    76 / 100

    …So I want to ask about this is a lot of the founders who, when they go to Y Combinator, they typically stay in San Francisco or move to New York, but you guys move back to Boston.…

  9. Determining when to leave to start your own company, making strategic bets, and selling to enterprise customers w/ Anhang Zhu @ TierZero

    Engineering Founders · 2026-06-18

    76 / 100

  10. FintechTalks LIVE: Rhim Shah

    FintechTalks · 2026-05-04

    75 / 100

    …Um, but I think you know, leaping into the founding journey, you know, starting off from Y Combinator has really started uh really kicked off things in the US, yeah.…

  11. Clean Data, Business Context, and the Future of Analytics - Featuring Noy Twerski, Sherloq Co-founder & CEO

    Data Hurdles · 2025-02-17

    75 / 100

    …We actually, with this idea, plus one design partner, which we can talk about also, got into, accepted into Y Combinator after we raised our seed round.…

  12. #64 From $7 on a Pizza Box to a $16M Series A | Voice AI Startup Phonely | Will Bodewes

    Venturing with Vishesh · 2026-05-28

    73 / 100

  13. Unpacking "A Crisis Moment In Seed"

    Venture Unlocked · 2025-11-12

    73 / 100

  14. Mark Suster of Upfront Ventures: Los Angeles' VC Powerhouse on Why LA is Dominating Space, Hard Tech, and National Defense

    Something Ventured · 2026-06-23

    72 / 100

    …Um, I created a solution for that, which is I set up um back then when Y Combinator was new, like uh, you know, it it w it wasn't like the power of the universe.…

  15. Inspiring Great Leaders Podcast 253 Andre Laplume Spinout Ventures

    Inspiring Great Leaders Podcast · 2025-05-17

    71 / 100

    …Even if you take for example if you take the incoming, uh, Y Combinator cohort, uh, right, one of those top, uh, accelerator programs.…

  16. Optimizing Cloud Costs for SaaS Startups

    SaaS for Developers · 2024-04-04

    71 / 100

    …We applied to Y Combinator, uh, got in with that sort of social app idea and very quickly, uh, you know, they told us we think you should pivot.…

  17. How to get a VC (like me) to wire you $2M in under 2 weeks (the FOMO playbook) | Solo Episode

    A Product Market Fit Show · 2026-05-18

    68 / 100

    …The first one, the most obvious one is get into Y Combinator, get into 500 Startups, get into some accelerator that's actually recognized and branded.…

  18. daniel ha & gadi borovich / antigravity capital

    slice podcast · 2026-05-12

    67 / 100

    …I take a lot of inspiration in why, for example, Y Combinator did, like when we were doing the Accelerator XX, like I was a student of what made YC truly special.…

  19. GTTW: This Is How AI Will Change Law in Ghana Forever

    Building Bytes · 2025-12-14

    66 / 100

  20. Erica Brescia: From Founder to GitHub COO to VC | Grit, Guilt & Trusting Your Gut

    Founder Storiez · 2026-06-17

    66 / 100

    …And I don't really give a shit if I get into Y Combinator or not.…

  21. The Startup Junto #4: Snapt

    The Startup Junto · 2021-04-25

    64 / 100

    …peaker B: You know, that's an interesting point because I saw, um, Y Combinator now on a couple of occasions, they've actually forced single founders to partner up with a co founder before they can join the batch.…

  22. 21 in 21: Linn Bieske on Hack-Nation and Building Global AI Communities

    21 in 21 · 2026-04-16

    63 / 100

  23. Part I: From MIT Researcher to YC Entrepreneur. Building Workflow Stack with AI w/ Bernard Aceituno

    Masters of Automation · 2025-07-09

    63 / 100

    …So we said, okay, we have our together it's a pattern Y combinator.…

  24. How to Build a $1T Venture Platform with Daniel Dippold

    Ventures from The Valley · 2026-04-09

    62 / 100

    …It was more than I Believe more than Y Combinator.…

  25. Best of Build Mode: The Founder Mistakes That Cost Time, Money, and Growth

    Build Mode · 2026-06-04

    60 / 100

  26. Abdallah Shaban, Google - Fluttering Forward: Innovation and Community in Tech

    Build To Succeed · 2026-04-13

    60 / 100

    …So decided to leave and I, I me and one of engineers that on the Flutter SDK team, AWS Amplify, we started a company called Celest and we got into Y Combinator, was probably one of the most pivotal moments of my life, the amount of things that I've learned in the, you know, three months, four months that I was a part of Celest was just unbelievable.…

  27. Evolve | AI, HR, and the End of Empty Metrics with Stan Suchkov

    HR Visionaries International · 2025-09-11

    50 / 100

    …We have grabbed a lot of information uh by Y Combinator, it's like uh, uh an acceleration program with the best acceleration program in the world and they have a lot of videos and information how to build startups, how to build marketing funnels, etc, etc and we have…

  28. Lessons from the lab: Jasper AI

    The Customer Engagement Lab · 2023-11-03

    40 / 100

    …And they made some tweaks to it, and they built out some extra functionality and they took it to Y Combinator.…

  29. Matheus Riolfi: Growing a Venture-Backed Startup

    Founder Views · 2023-05-02

  30. How Kevin Hu Navigated Metaplane's Journey from Pivot to Series A and Beyond

    The SaaS Revolution Show · 2025-01-09

  31. Promote People Until They Break (And Other Really Bad Startup Advice) | AA265

    Arguing Agile · 2026-07-22

  32. From Farm to Fortune: Toph Day on Building Businesses, Leading with Humility, and Fueling Innovation in the Midwest (Part One)

    Startup Science Podcast with Gregory Shepard · 2025-03-26

  33. Ep 048 - Chauncey Kerr Hamilton, Partner at XYZ Venture Capital

    New to Venture · 2025-08-27

    …The thing that led me to Venture there was my best friend at Wired who I sort of followed her career trajectory as this woman, Kat Mignolic, who's a partner at Y Combinator.…