applications from startups around the world. The Admissions Team is responsible for designing that process and reviewing the tens of thousands of applications we receive each year.</p>\n<p>How do we review that many applications? Mostly, it’s lots of people reading lots of applications! There’s no secret machine learning model that can find companies with great potential. Instead, we build lots of custom software to help our team work efficiently. Our app reading software allows us to quickly read applications, send messages to founders if we have any questions, and decide which teams we want to interview.</p>\n<h2>History of the Admissions Team</h2>\n<p>When YC first started, the admissions process was pretty manual. YC’s 4 founders printed out the applications, wrote comments in the margin, and passed them around the room. As the batches started to grow, Paul Graham wrote the first software to accept and process applications (it was originally part of the same code that powered <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://news.ycombinator.com/">Hacker News</a>!). By 2014, YC was receiving 3,000 applications per batch, PG retired, and we moved to our current application software. Then in 2016, the Admissions Team was created and began to hire more people to review applications, analyze data, and update the application. Today, a team of 5 runs the admissions process.</p>\n<h2>What’s unique about the Admissions Team?</h2>\n<p>The Admissions Team is powered by human judgement, but it couldn’t work at YC’s scale without software. Sometimes, our problems can be solved by software (like automatic parsing of a founder’s responses), but sometimes it’s a human problem (how should we evaluate teams that haven’t launched yet?). This interaction between humans and software is always changing. Each admissions cycle brings more applications than the previous one and our system is always being pushed to the limit in unexpected ways.</p>\n<h2>What are some projects we’ve recently worked on?</h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Rewriting our software to video interview teams (instead of flying<br />\nteams to California).</li>\n<li>Building new internal tools to allow us to do interviews more often<br />\n(like the <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://blog.ycombinator.com/early-deadline-for-yc-winter-2022//">early interviews</a> we’ve been running this year).</li>\n<li>Reviewing applications we didn’t fund but that raised money from<br />\nother investors, to learn how to improve our application reading and<br />\ninterview process.</li>\n<li>Analyzing YC application data — for example, we looked at whether<br />\nrepeat applications hurt a team’s chances of being funded. (It turns<br />\nout they don’t! Teams that re-apply and have made progress since<br />\ntheir first app are much more likely to get into YC.)</li>\n<li>Working with the Outreach and <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.startupschool.org//">Startup School</a> teams to get more teams<br />\napplying to YC.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>The thing I love about the Admissions Team is that we have a lot of autonomy to experiment and change our process. It’s also incredibly exciting to read all of these ideas which may someday change the world. If you’re interested in joining our team, we’re hiring <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/careers?ashby_jid=ef00c8d1-76e7-4cc3-82fe-7cc3e4679652\%22>Software Engineers</a> to improve our software and <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/careers?ashby_jid=c8a4c1c8-9410-479f-86e7-cb2c1ca35e32\%22>Admissions Associates</a> to read applications.</p>\n<!--kg-card-end: html-->","comment_id":"1104891","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/BlogTwitter-Image-Template-2.png","featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2021-08-19T02:00:13.000-07:00","updated_at":"2022-06-24T15:16:36.000-07:00","published_at":"2021-08-19T02:00:13.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":"Twice a year, YC accepts applications from startups around the world. 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The Admissions Team is responsible for designing that process and reviewing the tens of thousands of applications we receive each year.","reading_time":2,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":null},"mentions":[],"related_posts":[{"id":"62715e7254a948000183a4e9","uuid":"ad69e66f-6dc4-4508-bf77-31aab125dcd3","title":"Y Combinator’s (Virtual) Summer Career Expo - June 8th","slug":"yc-tech-expo-s22","html":"<p>Y Combinator is hosting our Summer Career Expo online on <strong>Wednesday, June 8th,</strong> <strong>4 pm PT</strong>. This is our way to introduce engineers, PMs, and designers to the latest batch of YC startups (<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies?batch=W22&isHiring=true\%22>W22) that are looking to hire.</p><!--kg-card-begin: html--><center>\n<a class=\"ycdc-retro-btn ycdc-retro-btn-gold mt-[-10px] ml-[13px]\" href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.workatastartup.com/events/startup-tech-expo-summer-2022/?utm_source=ycblog\%22 style=\"text-decoration: none;\" title=\"title for your link\" target=\"_blank\">Meet the Startups</a>\n</center><!--kg-card-end: html--><p>We’ve vetted these startups to make sure they’re in a good position to hire, in terms of funding, strong teams, and impactful products to work on. (We’re also including a few older startups, in case you’re open to larger 25-100 person companies!)</p><p>At the expo, founders will give rapid-fire pitches about themselves and their companies. 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It’s a great way to survey top YC startups all at once, instead of having to seek them out individually on your own.</p><p>Among the 40+ startups attending this year’s event are:</p><ul><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/simplehash/">SimpleHash (W22)</a>: Organizing NFTs and digital assets by allowing web3 developers to query all NFT data from a single API</li><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/kable/">Kable (W22)</a>: Helping API companies bring their products to market faster through usage-based billing and analytics</li><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/kalshi/">Kalshi (W19)</a>: The first federally regulated exchange where you can trade on the outcomes of events</li><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/sieve/">Sieve (W22)</a>: AI infrastructure for video, enabling software developers to easily process and understand visual data</li><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/agave/">Agave (W22)</a>: Plaid for construction, building an API to help construction companies share data between systems and parties</li></ul><p>If you’re considering a job change – or are just curious about what’s out there – we welcome you to apply to join us for an informative and efficient evening of networking with founders. Come meet the latest YC startups that could be the next big thing.</p><!--kg-card-begin: html--><center>\n<a class=\"ycdc-retro-btn ycdc-retro-btn-gold mt-[-10px] ml-[13px]\" href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.workatastartup.com/events/startup-tech-expo-summer-2022/?utm_source=ycblog\%22 style=\"text-decoration: none;\" title=\"title for your link\" target=\"_blank\">Apply Now</a>\n</center><!--kg-card-end: html--><p><em>Special shoutout to </em><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/welcome/">Welcome (W20)</em></a><em>, the company building the virtual events platform that we’re running the expo on!</em></p>","comment_id":"62715e7254a948000183a4e9","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/05/Expo.png","featured":true,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2022-05-03T09:55:14.000-07:00","updated_at":"2022-06-27T17:41:13.000-07:00","published_at":"2022-05-04T11:02:26.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":"Y Combinator is hosting our Summer Career Expo online on Wednesday, June 8th, 4 pm PT. 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If you’re an undergraduate or graduate student, apply below to join our summer 2022 cohort.</p><p>When you intern at a YC startup, in addition to hands-on startup experience, you’ll have access to the YC community. You’ll attend closed-door talks with YC founders to hear their lessons learned, and you’ll be part of a strong cohort of fellow students, engineers, and builders at other YC startups. </p><p>Here’s a sneak preview of a few of the many rapidly growing YC startups that you could join: </p><ul><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/whatnot/">Whatnot (W20)</a> is a livestream shopping platform and marketplace that is building the future of ecommerce: an interactive community where creators can make a living off their passion. Whatnot is looking for a software engineer to build new features and implement growth strategies.</li><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/volley/">Volley (W18)</a> builds voice-controlled entertainment experiences for Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and smartphones. Volley aims to become the go-to hub for interactive audio entertainment, as Netflix did for television. Their 35-person team is looking for social media & marketing and software engineering interns.</li><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/holy-grail-inc/">Holy Grail (S19)</a> uses electrons to capture CO2 from the atmosphere. Holy Grail, based in Mountain View, CA, has roles available for mechanical engineers, product designers, backend/data engineers and operations to help bring their modular CO2 scrubbers to market.</li><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/alinea/">Alinea (W21)</a> is an investing app for Gen Zs who want to understand the companies they’re investing in. 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","reading_time":1,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/03/yc-internships-2022-2-1.png","twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":"YC startups are actively looking for summer interns. Apply now to join YC's Summer 2022 Internship Cohort! ","meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":null},{"id":"62cd8a8040d57c0001d58992","uuid":"e38a4797-570d-4e20-8566-2a77e7e96a92","title":"6 founding engineer roles at W22 YC startups","slug":"founding-engineer-roles-at-yc-startups","html":"<p>The <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs/">YC job board</a> has always been the best way to find early roles at funded and vetted YC startups. This is especially true after a startup graduates from YC, raises an early round and starts to hire their founding team. </p><p>Below are a few of the most recent YC startups (Winter '22 batch) hiring for founding engineers, with compensation in the $160-180K range and equity around 1.5-2.0%. </p><p>To keep up with the newest YC startups hiring on the platform, create a profile on <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs/">YC's job board</a> and find yours.</p><p><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/propelauth/jobs/tKWj4qx-founding-frontend-engineer/">1.) Founding Frontend Engineer at PropelAuth (W22)</strong></a></p><ul><li><strong>About the company: </strong>PropelAuth provides the right level of authentication for all stages of a company. New startups can use our hosted pre-built UIs which provide the simplest possible integration right out of the box.</li><li><strong>What stands out: </strong>Solo founder with eng and leadership experience from Palantir and SafeGraph. Deep experience in ML/NLP tech and product-led development. CMU grad.</li><li><strong>Comp & equity: </strong>$130k - $160k, 0.50% - 2.00%</li></ul><p><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/rally-2/jobs/FYFNiTn-founding-software-engineer-product/">2.) Founding Software Engineer (Product) at Rally (W22)</strong></a></p><ul><li><strong>About the role: </strong>We're building the world’s best User Research CRM - a platform that automates outreach, screening, scheduling, incentives, and participant tracking, all in one place.</li><li><strong>What stands out: </strong>Work directly with the founder/CTO and own large portions of the product. Founders previously worked at Facebook and Hubspot. </li><li><strong>Comp & equity: </strong>$100k - $150k, 0.50% - 1.50%</li></ul><p><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/mutableai/jobs/qnjnCR3-founding-full-stack-software-engineer/">3.) Founding Full Stack Software Engineer at MutableAI (W22)</strong></a></p><ul><li><strong>About the company: </strong>Our long term mission: to enable programmers to massively decrease the time to create high quality production code in all languages using AI.</li><li><strong>What stands out: </strong>Solo founder was PhD candidate in physics-turned-software engineer. Previously worked at Google and Apple. </li><li><strong>Comp & equity: </strong>$100k - $180k, 0.50% - 2.00%</li></ul><p><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/vessel/jobs/JeIBiSj-founding-engineer/">4.) Founding Engineer at Vessel (W22)</strong></a></p><ul><li><strong>About the company: </strong>The universal API for CRMs.</li><li><strong>What stands out: </strong>Fragmentation in the CRM space, with 65+ CRMs only covering 60% of the market. Great for anyone interested in API development.</li><li><strong>Comp & equity: </strong>$110k - $190k, 0.50% - 1.50%</li></ul><p><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/windmill/jobs/WlSHAed-founding-engineer/">5.) Founding Engineer at Windmill (S22)</strong></a></p><ul><li><strong>About the company: </strong>Windmill (windmill.dev) is an open-source & self-hostable developer platform for multi-step automation & internal tools.</li><li><strong>About the role: </strong>As a developer, be a user of your own product and contribute to product ideas and development.</li><li><strong>Comp & equity: </strong>$70k - $110k, 0.25% - 2.00%</li></ul><p><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/permitflow/jobs/axcfyjc-founding-software-engineer/">6.) Founding Software Engineer at Permitflow (W22)</strong></a></p><ul><li><strong>About the company: </strong>PermitFlow is TurboTax for construction permitting. We are on a mission to streamline and simplify construction permitting in the United States, unlocking more value in the $1.6 trillion construction market. </li><li><strong>What stands out: </strong>Regulatory & operational-driven industry being tackled with software. Has early customers and already generating revenue. </li><li><strong>Comp & equity: </strong>$140k - $180k, 0.50% - 2.00%</li></ul>","comment_id":"62cd8a8040d57c0001d58992","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/07/6-founding-engineer-roles-at-W22-YC-startups--1--2.png","featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2022-07-12T07:51:44.000-07:00","updated_at":"2022-07-13T09:41:36.000-07:00","published_at":"2022-07-12T12:59:47.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":"The YC job board has always been the best way to find early roles at funded and vetted YC startups. Below are a few of the most recent YC startups (Winter '22 batch) hiring for founding engineers, with compensation in the $160-180K range and equity around 1.5-2.0%. 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Twice a year, YC accepts applications from startups around the world. The Admissions Team is responsible for designing that process and reviewing the tens of thousands of applications we receive each year.
How do we review that many applications? Mostly, it’s lots of people reading lots of applications! There’s no secret machine learning model that can find companies with great potential. Instead, we build lots of custom software to help our team work efficiently. Our app reading software allows us to quickly read applications, send messages to founders if we have any questions, and decide which teams we want to interview.
History of the Admissions Team
When YC first started, the admissions process was pretty manual. YC’s 4 founders printed out the applications, wrote comments in the margin, and passed them around the room. As the batches started to grow, Paul Graham wrote the first software to accept and process applications (it was originally part of the same code that powered Hacker News!). By 2014, YC was receiving 3,000 applications per batch, PG retired, and we moved to our current application software. Then in 2016, the Admissions Team was created and began to hire more people to review applications, analyze data, and update the application. Today, a team of 5 runs the admissions process.
What’s unique about the Admissions Team?
The Admissions Team is powered by human judgement, but it couldn’t work at YC’s scale without software. Sometimes, our problems can be solved by software (like automatic parsing of a founder’s responses), but sometimes it’s a human problem (how should we evaluate teams that haven’t launched yet?). This interaction between humans and software is always changing. Each admissions cycle brings more applications than the previous one and our system is always being pushed to the limit in unexpected ways.
What are some projects we’ve recently worked on?
Rewriting our software to video interview teams (instead of flying
teams to California).
Building new internal tools to allow us to do interviews more often
(like the early interviews we’ve been running this year).
Reviewing applications we didn’t fund but that raised money from
other investors, to learn how to improve our application reading and
interview process.
Analyzing YC application data — for example, we looked at whether
repeat applications hurt a team’s chances of being funded. (It turns
out they don’t! Teams that re-apply and have made progress since
their first app are much more likely to get into YC.)
Working with the Outreach and Startup School teams to get more teams
applying to YC.
The thing I love about the Admissions Team is that we have a lot of autonomy to experiment and change our process. It’s also incredibly exciting to read all of these ideas which may someday change the world. If you’re interested in joining our team, we’re hiring Software Engineers to improve our software and Admissions Associates to read applications.
