@JerryQian_ and I just went to our first ever @ycombinator Alumni Demo Day yesterday and it was incredible.
6 months ago while in the trenches of building Reacher we were the ones nervously rehearsing our pitch over and over again and it was nostalgic watching the new batch go through the exact same thing.
Now being on the other side I realize the best part of these YC events is the ability to reconnect with other founders and investors during coffee breaks.
Most conversations we had were Founders sharing how much traction they've gotten since the batch, who raised how much at what valuation, who's using Claude Code vs Codex vs OpenClaw for what use cases, how everyone is thinking about hiring right now, why are the cool new companies on the block, etc. Just insane amounts of alpha that you genuinely cannot get anywhere else.
There's something about being in a room full of hundreds of founders who are all obsessed with what they're working on that I still can't fully put into words. The energy that comes with being near all these insanely smart people and honestly around all this crazy money and capital just feels otherworldly.
I feel blessed to be a part of this community and I highly recommend any and all startup founders to apply to YC if you’re even remotely interested. The network, relationships and pure ALPHA you build and are exposed to are forever and the value of that is infinite.
On that note I also last minute decided to head to ShopTalk on my train ride home last night so if you're going to be in Vegas this week and want to hang out shoot me a DM!
