This is mostly AI companies needing a large investment (maybe larger than YC's standard 500k) to get off the ground, and so YC now starts acting as market maker (more than it already is), by literally getting people that are primed to buy (filling out the form where minimum amount is 500k, talking about their last funded pilot, company size, etc), so YC can now say this is the size of validated opportunities, so their (potentially higher) seed is now derisked, but also they don't have to wait for their startups to 10x in 3 years, they can 20x in 12 months.
The startup however, will do the thing they advised them not to do, which is tailor their roadmap to a large customer.
But yes, this is early exit/rugpull planning. If it weren't, it would not be AI exclusive and I don't think companies are that excited to know the latest and brightest AI companies. They can simply wait for the market. But they create FOMO, and now they open a small window, make calls to know how much you'll commit and all the FOMO execs will fly in. I'll be fun.
This is interesting, but I think most enterprise AI buyers probably aren't looking to buy from the current batch; they're just too volatile at that stage. This does seem like an opportunity for cross-pollination where early start-ups get to test their product signals and enterprises get to see what's on the cutting edge.
This seems more beneficial to the founders because the the enterprises could instead just choose to do some research on the start-ups. It's not like the start-ups are keeping their knowledge quiet because for them to survive they need to convince everybody what their doing is meaningful.
Right, the point of this from YC's perspective is to identify and pre-qualify the minority of enterprise AI buyers that can move quickly. Even those buyers aren't going to research and inbound to early-stage YC startups very often. The startups aren't intentionally staying quiet, but often they haven't nailed product-market fit and/or messaging yet.
> The Early Access Network is an invite-only group of senior technology leaders who want to see what's coming before it's on anyone's shortlist.
> Four times a year, we put a hand-picked group of YC's enterprise-AI founders in a room with buyers who can actually run a pilot. Fall 2026 kicks off on October 22 in San Francisco.
Help me understand. The purpose is to help founders get sales contracts? What's the value for the buyers? Acquire people before they become competitors?
understand what founders are building, which helps them deploy AI internally. you'd be surprised how hard this is to do in a big (tech) company. also, yes there is a peer group aspect.
It's been obvious for years that AI will bifurcate society even more between the haves and have nots, contrary to "democratizing AI" niceties espoused by big AI CEOs.
It was less obvious that access will be further gated by an Old Boy Network. I guess the frontier model whitelists of yestermonth were a portent.
YCombinator has its biases, but I don't know of many other investment firms that have a university style, "application" process. It's almost always, warm-intros you need.
This Early access network is just an intro system once you get through the Application process (like Universities having a job fair).
TBF YC has always said the value is in the network.
What's interesting (alarming?) is them formalizing exclusion of access to technology via the network. It's explicitly ossifying an access control system over what used to be handshakes.
I don’t understand, Ycombinator company list is public information list, go buy from any one of them anytime?
AFAICT, this is mostly a way for YC companies to get warm intros into potential customers. Almost exactly like a job fair at a university but for software contracts instead of jobs.
> Ycombinator company list is public information list, go buy from any one of them anytime
Unless this prototype model works out financially for the companies, and every AI company starts telling you to go through an (inevitably AI vetted) application process to get access.
Decades ago, getting a Google account to use GMail wasn't seen as a problem because you could run your own mail server. Try getting your own mail server to deliver mail today.
It’s funny how we always celebrate (or at the very least don’t comment negatively) when someone/a startup sets out to build an ecosystem and then love punishing them after they succeed. How very American of us
Just curious, how exactly do you propose they do this instead?
Rent out a convention center, open invitation, and then still complain when all xxK slots are taken up?
Or do it virtually and inundate these startups with thousands of requests and get mad when half don’t get responded to?
Outlaw private capital altogether and force people to IPO to raise money? And then what, complain when only a fraction of those companies work out and the average guy with an E*trade account not in on the joke gets screwed over and over?
At least YC takes applicants and the process is somewhat transparent
Of course there’s a (prob big) element of who you know going on, but it seems to me like the least shitty approach if your goal is to make this at least somewhat accessible
This aspect of yc is good - I know plenty of come from nowhere, unprivileged backgrounds who got into yc and were able to start a company
Now, they fact a lot of them get super douchey once they are in is a different story
Do not mistake any VC's eagerness to find fresh meat for the grinder for a philanthropic or otherwise virtuous motive. VC exists for one purpose only. Extract value from others.
Seems just like another case of collusion - continuing the story of VCs pushing all of their companies to use each other and 'stay within the network'. The good news (kinda) for the rest of us, is that many of these VC marketing/product/'strategy' people aren't actually all that competent - this is literally the best they can come up with.
What's the "old boy network" thing here? This looks like a sales outreach event. It's connecting enterprise startups that want to do pilots with enterprises that will consider pilots.
Having been through YC, there's certainly some of this, but the overwhelming majority of founders were pretty down to earth. People generally just want to solve hard problems.
Genuine question, I haven't been, is the motivation "solving hard problems" or is it "receive external validation and get-rich-quick by solving hard problems"?
Mark Cuban posting about a sense of arrogance and entitlement is certainly something. There's a reason behind the character of HBO Silicon Valley's Russ Hanneman...
YC isn't taxing you, or elected to serve your interest, or beholden to public recordkeeping law or sworn to a national constitution with explicit rules against self-enrichment.
YC can do whatever they want, you can not play their game if you choose. It's not really comparable.
This is a very good point, I did not mean literally in that sense; only in that they are offering "the privileged" exclusive access to information that will further entrench their positions.
I apologize for not being clearer in my comment. I actually agree with your response and fully understand that there is a fundamental difference but also believe that the outcomes of both the aforementioned are aligned.
It's a different kind of tax. The VC model is to get you addicted to a service and then jack up prices as soon as they've squeezed out other competition. You can't opt out of that game when AirBnBs take over your town.
That's fair and accurate, there's a lot broken with the system. But I wouldn't place the blame at the feet of YC, it would be just as bad without them.
This is mostly AI companies needing a large investment (maybe larger than YC's standard 500k) to get off the ground, and so YC now starts acting as market maker (more than it already is), by literally getting people that are primed to buy (filling out the form where minimum amount is 500k, talking about their last funded pilot, company size, etc), so YC can now say this is the size of validated opportunities, so their (potentially higher) seed is now derisked, but also they don't have to wait for their startups to 10x in 3 years, they can 20x in 12 months.
The startup however, will do the thing they advised them not to do, which is tailor their roadmap to a large customer.
But yes, this is early exit/rugpull planning. If it weren't, it would not be AI exclusive and I don't think companies are that excited to know the latest and brightest AI companies. They can simply wait for the market. But they create FOMO, and now they open a small window, make calls to know how much you'll commit and all the FOMO execs will fly in. I'll be fun.
"early exit/rugpull planning" nope.
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> The Early Access Network is an invite-only group of senior technology leaders who want to see what's coming before it's on anyone's shortlist.
> Four times a year, we put a hand-picked group of YC's enterprise-AI founders in a room with buyers who can actually run a pilot.
Seems like a win-win.
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If you're an enterprise buyer I'm confident most pre-launch YC startups would be more than happy to talk to you about a pilot.
Relatedly, I think "acceptance" to this program will be easy, bordering on automatic, if you have an enterprise AI budget and purchasing authority.
It really seems like this is a program where the exclusivity would cut literally in the opposite direction, against the startups.
This is interesting, but I think most enterprise AI buyers probably aren't looking to buy from the current batch; they're just too volatile at that stage. This does seem like an opportunity for cross-pollination where early start-ups get to test their product signals and enterprises get to see what's on the cutting edge.
This seems more beneficial to the founders because the the enterprises could instead just choose to do some research on the start-ups. It's not like the start-ups are keeping their knowledge quiet because for them to survive they need to convince everybody what their doing is meaningful.
Right, the point of this from YC's perspective is to identify and pre-qualify the minority of enterprise AI buyers that can move quickly. Even those buyers aren't going to research and inbound to early-stage YC startups very often. The startups aren't intentionally staying quiet, but often they haven't nailed product-market fit and/or messaging yet.
this is well put
I wonder what the dress code is.
"business causal" ofc :)
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The future isn't found in consensus or groups.
> The Early Access Network is an invite-only group of senior technology leaders who want to see what's coming before it's on anyone's shortlist.
> Four times a year, we put a hand-picked group of YC's enterprise-AI founders in a room with buyers who can actually run a pilot. Fall 2026 kicks off on October 22 in San Francisco.
Hi Claude!
What clues did you use in this to spot Claude?
AI copy from the AI company incubator is hardly the worse sin
I actually don't have a problem with people using AI to write but this is such a small amount of text that outsourcing it to AI screams "laziness".
i wrote all the copy here the old fashioned way https://www.ycombinator.com/early-access
Help me understand. The purpose is to help founders get sales contracts? What's the value for the buyers? Acquire people before they become competitors?
Usually the rule of a CTO/CIO is to foster innovation. Getting a custom solution from a big name VC helps then fulfil their JD within the company.
understand what founders are building, which helps them deploy AI internally. you'd be surprised how hard this is to do in a big (tech) company. also, yes there is a peer group aspect.
It's been obvious for years that AI will bifurcate society even more between the haves and have nots, contrary to "democratizing AI" niceties espoused by big AI CEOs.
It was less obvious that access will be further gated by an Old Boy Network. I guess the frontier model whitelists of yestermonth were a portent.
YCombinator has its biases, but I don't know of many other investment firms that have a university style, "application" process. It's almost always, warm-intros you need.
This Early access network is just an intro system once you get through the Application process (like Universities having a job fair).
TBF YC has always said the value is in the network.
What's interesting (alarming?) is them formalizing exclusion of access to technology via the network. It's explicitly ossifying an access control system over what used to be handshakes.
I don’t understand, Ycombinator company list is public information list, go buy from any one of them anytime?
AFAICT, this is mostly a way for YC companies to get warm intros into potential customers. Almost exactly like a job fair at a university but for software contracts instead of jobs.
> Ycombinator company list is public information list, go buy from any one of them anytime
Unless this prototype model works out financially for the companies, and every AI company starts telling you to go through an (inevitably AI vetted) application process to get access.
Decades ago, getting a Google account to use GMail wasn't seen as a problem because you could run your own mail server. Try getting your own mail server to deliver mail today.
It’s funny how we always celebrate (or at the very least don’t comment negatively) when someone/a startup sets out to build an ecosystem and then love punishing them after they succeed. How very American of us
Just curious, how exactly do you propose they do this instead?
Rent out a convention center, open invitation, and then still complain when all xxK slots are taken up?
Or do it virtually and inundate these startups with thousands of requests and get mad when half don’t get responded to?
Outlaw private capital altogether and force people to IPO to raise money? And then what, complain when only a fraction of those companies work out and the average guy with an E*trade account not in on the joke gets screwed over and over?
At least YC takes applicants and the process is somewhat transparent
Of course there’s a (prob big) element of who you know going on, but it seems to me like the least shitty approach if your goal is to make this at least somewhat accessible
This aspect of yc is good - I know plenty of come from nowhere, unprivileged backgrounds who got into yc and were able to start a company
Now, they fact a lot of them get super douchey once they are in is a different story
Do not mistake any VC's eagerness to find fresh meat for the grinder for a philanthropic or otherwise virtuous motive. VC exists for one purpose only. Extract value from others.
There are far worse gigs than VC backed founder.
What I said was not a critique of founders, just the devil they make (sometimes necessary) deals with.
Pretty much every incubator I've seen has an open application process.
I mean now..yes. Not in 2008.
Why would we be talking about 2008?
Because that's about when YC started this open application system? When no one else was.
First batch was 2005. :)
Seems just like another case of collusion - continuing the story of VCs pushing all of their companies to use each other and 'stay within the network'. The good news (kinda) for the rest of us, is that many of these VC marketing/product/'strategy' people aren't actually all that competent - this is literally the best they can come up with.
What's the "old boy network" thing here? This looks like a sales outreach event. It's connecting enterprise startups that want to do pilots with enterprises that will consider pilots.
Nature has shown variety wins over inbreeding, I don't see how AI will change this
Inbreeding won all human societies until about 1900 and will win all human societies from now on.
My guess - next round of this will be for pay. This is the soft-launch before they monetize this "exclusive access" .
No but it reinforces the value of the YC brand. VC is always looking for an edge
nope.
Wonder if people going to this will have the same infamous sense of arrogance and entitlement that is common to Y combinator folks?
Source:
https://x.com/mcuban/status/692595120969875456
How could that possibly happen to a hand-picked group of YC's enterprise-AI founders?!
Having been through YC, there's certainly some of this, but the overwhelming majority of founders were pretty down to earth. People generally just want to solve hard problems.
Genuine question, I haven't been, is the motivation "solving hard problems" or is it "receive external validation and get-rich-quick by solving hard problems"?
This type of group is exactly what develop that feeling of entitlement and arrogance. It would be very surprising if that’s not the case.
That being said, all the ex YC people I interacted with in person have been awesome. But there is definitely a YC entitled group
Mark Cuban posting about a sense of arrogance and entitlement is certainly something. There's a reason behind the character of HBO Silicon Valley's Russ Hanneman...
[spiderman pointing at spiderman.gif]
I thought Chris Sacca was the inspiration for Russ Hanneman.
The beard, the shirts, the sexual assault allegations. The three nannies suing him - one for no good reason!
Sacca was not doing anything like 'radio on the internet' in the 1994-2000 dotcom 1.0 boom era...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast.com
^^^ this guy fucks.
You’re right. So Russ was an amalgamation of sacca, cuban, and probably a few more.
What was he replying to?
Hot take but I don't mind startup founders being plucky and a bit arrogant/naieve. They need it.
They need to be naïve?
If you're too grounded you say no to everything like a reasonable person with experience :D
Being about 'AI' is mandatory now, I guess?
This isn’t just AI…it’s ‘enterprise-AI’.
It’s AI, but with more bureaucracy and politics.
haha. we plan to do other events, but focused on B2B first. hence "enterprise AI"
Who would want to join a semi-technical echo chamber like YC.
Isn’t it just for rich kids whose dads lead the round?
[dead]
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So basically now YC is looking to emulate Trump and his "pay for early access to truth social posts" ?
re: https://time.com/article/2026/08/13/trump-sued-truth-social-...
YC isn't taxing you, or elected to serve your interest, or beholden to public recordkeeping law or sworn to a national constitution with explicit rules against self-enrichment.
YC can do whatever they want, you can not play their game if you choose. It's not really comparable.
This is a very good point, I did not mean literally in that sense; only in that they are offering "the privileged" exclusive access to information that will further entrench their positions.
I apologize for not being clearer in my comment. I actually agree with your response and fully understand that there is a fundamental difference but also believe that the outcomes of both the aforementioned are aligned.
> YC isn't taxing you
It's a different kind of tax. The VC model is to get you addicted to a service and then jack up prices as soon as they've squeezed out other competition. You can't opt out of that game when AirBnBs take over your town.
The problem is predatory pricing is hard to prove, and the FTC is impotent or complicit, depending on the administration
That's fair and accurate, there's a lot broken with the system. But I wouldn't place the blame at the feet of YC, it would be just as bad without them.
> blame at the feet of YC, it would be just as bad without them.
I disagree, I think YC is fully to blame here as are the other grifters of the current administration.