Your Startup Story
A Startup Story
The Summer Experiment: How Y Combinator Reinvented How Startups Are Born
Hall of Fame · an editorial retelling
In 2005, Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris, and Trevor Blackwell tried an experiment: fund a batch of very young founders with small checks, all at once, and teach them together over a summer. The 'Summer Founders Program' became Y Combinator.
Origin
Paul Graham had sold Viaweb to Yahoo and become essayist-in-chief to a generation of programmers. After a talk at Harvard where students kept asking how to raise money, he and Jessica Livingston — then interviewing founders for a book — decided to fix angel investing's actual problems: it was slow, opaque, and allergic to twenty-two-year-olds. With Viaweb cofounders Robert Morris and Trevor Blackwell, they put up their own money and invited students to spend a summer in Cambridge building companies.
The Experiment
The mechanics were deliberately unconventional: standard terms for everyone, tiny checks, a batch instead of one-off bets, weekly dinners with speakers who told the truth. The first batch of eight included Reddit — and Sam Altman, then a Stanford sophomore. What was meant as a way to learn angel investing turned out to be a repeatable machine.
Traction
The batch model compounded: alumni helped the next batch, Demo Day concentrated investor attention, and 'YC company' became a credential. Airbnb, Stripe, Dropbox, Coinbase, DoorDash, and Instacart all passed through. 'Make something people want,' the program's motto, became the startup world's founding scripture.
Legacy
Y Combinator has funded thousands of companies worth, collectively, many hundreds of billions of dollars — but its deeper legacy is cultural. It standardized the idea that founders are made, not anointed: that with small money, honest advice, and a deadline, unknown people can build enormous things.