How to use YC Startup School to build your startup and find a co-founder
TL;DR
YC Startup School is a free online course from Y Combinator on how to start a startup, bundled with YC Co-Founder Matching and a weekly progress tool. The course takes about 7 weeks at 1 to 2 hours a week. It suits first-time and early-stage founders who want YC's advice or a co-founder, and it offers no place to advertise a product.
What is YC Startup School?
Startup School is Y Combinator's free founder programme at startupschool.org. Y Combinator (YC) is the Silicon Valley accelerator that backed Airbnb, DoorDash, Stripe, Reddit and Coinbase in their first days. The site promises advice based on 15 years of YC's knowledge.
The curriculum includes talks such as Modern Startup Funding by Carolynn Levy, inventor of the SAFE (simple agreement for future equity), How to Get Users and Grow by Gustaf Alstromer, former head of growth at Airbnb, and How and When to Apply to Y Combinator by Dalton Caldwell, YC's head of admissions.
Two tools sit next to the course:
- YC Co-Founder Matching, which YC calls the world's largest co-founder matching platform, with over 100,000 matches made.
- A weekly update tool where you log your growth and progress.
Who should join YC Startup School?
- First-time founders with an idea, a side project or a company in its first months.
- Solo founders looking for a technical or business co-founder: the matching page shows about 3,200 active profiles in San Francisco, 3,000 in New York City and 2,900 in London.
- Founders planning a YC application who want to hear the partners first and build a record of weekly updates.
- Skip it if you want customers or press: the site has no public product directory and no launch feed.
How much does YC Startup School cost?
Everything is free. The course costs nothing, and YC's FAQ calls co-founder matching "a completely free product", with no commitment, no equity and no strings attached.
How do you use YC Startup School for your startup?
- Go to startupschool.org and click Sign up to create your account.
- Work through the curriculum at your own pace, roughly 1 to 2 hours a week for 7 weeks.
- Post a weekly update with your numbers (users, revenue, launches) to stay accountable.
- For a co-founder, open YC Co-Founder Matching, fill in your preferences for skills, interests and location, and wait for approval. Profiles are visible only to other approved members.
- Review the candidates the matching engine suggests and send invitations. When someone accepts, you have a match, and you set up a call.
Tips to get more out of YC Startup School
- Write a precise profile. Candidates decide from your profile alone, so state what you have built, the hours you can commit and the skills you need in a partner.
- Keep weekly updates honest. A run of real numbers is the record you want when you apply to YC or talk to investors.
- Move matches to a video call fast, then test working together on a small project before you split equity.
- Know the SEO reality. The domain authority of 54 belongs to startupschool.org; matching profiles are private, and nothing on the platform links to your site.
Our verdict
Free advice from YC partners and a co-founder pool with over 100,000 matches behind it make Startup School the first stop for a founder without a team. Use it to learn and to find a partner, and pair it with a launch site when you want users.
More options: see all founder communities. Planning the launch around this listing? The Fe/male Switch startup game walks women founders from idea to first customers.