Y Combinator Startup Podcast

Replit was building toward the AI coding era years before it had a name. In 2024, the company shipped an agent that could take a request in plain English, work through errors, provision its own infrastructure, and keep going until the software actually worked. The model companies even reached out to ask how Replit had pulled it off.Co-founder and CEO Amjad Masad had been thinking about making programming radically more accessible since 2008, and Replit’s original pitch deck predicted AI-generated code before the Transformer paper was published. Today, that same technology is moving into banks, manufacturers, and other large companies, where Amjad says teams are replacing software projects once scoped at $10 million with $250,000 of Replit.On How to Build the Future, Paul Graham sits down with Amjad to talk about why Replit was so well positioned when coding agents arrived, what comes after vibe coding, and his bigger vision for the “self-driving company,” where AI agents increasingly build and operate the software a company needs.

Google, Anthropic, and Databricks were all started by founders with PhDs. But they’re exceptions to the rule. Many of the instincts that help researchers succeed in academia can often work against them when building a startup.YC Visiting Partner Francois Chaubard knows both worlds. He’s currently a PhD student, previously did research in Fei-Fei Li’s lab, and founded and ran Focal Systems (W16).In this episode of Startup School, Francois breaks down 10 mindset shifts researchers need to make to become formidable founders, from learning to thrive without grades or deadlines to distinguishing interesting problems from important ones, moving faster with imperfect information, and starting with what customers actually want.

Supabase has become one of the default backends for the AI coding era. The open source Postgres platform now has 13 million users, spins up more than a million databases every week, and roughly 70% of its new activity is coming from agents.As coding shifts from developers writing software by hand to agents building on their behalf, Supabase has been rebuilding itself around that new user.Supabase co-founder and CEO Paul Copplestone joins Garry, Harj, and Jared on the Lightcone to talk about what happens when everyone can become a builder. They dive into why personal software may become as common as personal documents, how to design products that agents actually want to use, and why knowing what to build may matter more than knowing how to build it.

Marvin Schwaibold leads the product design studio at Shopify, where his team is rethinking some of the company’s most important products for the AI era. Before Shopify, he co-founded the design studio Molly, working with companies including Apple and Google and building a reputation for highly crafted, interactive design.In this episode of Design Review, Marvin joins YC’s Aaron Epstein to show how AI has changed his process, from using Figma as a scratchpad to building working prototypes directly with tools like Codex. He explains why designers are becoming more like editors, how AI is making them more full-stack, and why taste and judgment matter even more when the tools can build almost anything.Then they review viewer-submitted websites and break down how hierarchy, motion, typography, and restraint can make a product feel more intentional.

There’s a misconception that a successful launch video needs to cost tens of thousands of dollars and feel like a high-production commercial. But Farza Majeed has a different approach.

Farza is the founder of Clicky and previously built Buildspace, one of the largest online schools for people working on their own ideas. He’s been making videos for over a decade, and today his posts regularly get millions of views. Rather than treating launches as rare, high-stakes moments, he’s made them part of the everyday process of building a company.

Farza sat down with YC’s Aaron Epstein to share his playbook for turning demos into stories people actually want to watch. He breaks down how he scripts videos that still feel off the cuff, why founders should launch constantly, and how to figure out which channels actually convert.